YAKUB KHAN Vs. STATE OF M.P.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE judgment delivered in this appeal shall be read as judgment in Criminal Appeals Nos. 1069 of 1972. Mohammad Arif vs. State of M.P. and 1070 of 1972, Balkrishna Choubey vs. State of M.P. The three appellants and one Shyam Behari Garg were jointly tried by the Special Judge, Jabalpur in Criminal Case No. 36 of 1968. They have all been convicted and sentenced to regorous imprisonment of varying terms. Shyam Behari, however, has not come up in appeal. He has undergone the sentence.

(2.) THE prosecution case may be briefly stated. On 24.8.1967, K.G. Kelkar (P.W. 37) one of the partners of the "Nutan Medical Hall", Napier Town, reported at the Omti Police Station that a blank cash -memo book bearing serial numbers 4801 to 5200 was missing from the shop and it was suspected that the same was stolen by Balkrishna Choubey who had left their service on 27.7.1967 and who was probably misusing the cash -memos for illicit gains. That on the day the report was made, the cash -memo book in use at the shop, was bearing serial numbers 4401 to 4800. It was disclosed in the report that on that very day in the afternoon, one S.N. Sarkar, an employee of the Telegraph workshop, had come to the shop for getting a cash memo corrected. The cash -memo was not of the current series and not issued by any servant or proprietor of the shop. That gave suspicion for a search and it was soon detected that a blank -cash -memo book was missingand the cash -memo brought by S.N. Sarkar was the one from the missing series. S.N. Sarkar wanted the initials of the patient changed from M.N. Sarkar to S.N. Sarkar. He told them that the medicines were purchased by his brother Ramprasad Sarkar. On being asked to call his brother so that necessary details might be obtained, S.N. Sarkar left the shop and never returned. The cash -memo that was sought to be corrected is Ex. P -80. A.G. Kelkar dispatched copies of his report to various authorities including the Collector the Civil Surgeon and the Superintendent posts and telegraphs. The Officers of the Telecom workship took in crest in the report and directed scrutiny of the cash -memos which the employees had filed in support of their medical reimbursement claims. They could trace out 93 cash memos of the alleged stolen series. The cash memos were all written by Shyam Behari Garg. They were either counter signed by Dr. Yakub Khan or by Dr. B.L. Singh. By that time the reimbursement claims of the employees had not been passed.

(3.) ALL the 93 employees who had preferred medical reimbursement claims on the basis of the cash memos from the alleged stolen series have not been prosecuted. The prosecution was launched against a few employees. Mohammad Arif is one of them.