DAULAT RAM SUD Vs. KAMALESWAR DUTT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) On May 30, 1947, the Plaintiff filed this suit with leave under Clause 12 of the Letters Patent after serving notice under Sec. 80 of the Code of Civil Procedure claiming Rs. 1,01,563 as damages from the Defendant for maliciously prosecuting him in conspiracy with many Marwari merchants of Tinsukia. Material averments made in the plaint are briefly stated in the next paragraph.

(2.) The Plaintiff Mr. Sud was the chief goods clerk of Tinsukia Railway station. The Defendant Mr. Datta was the Additional Circle Inspector of Police of that area. Mr. Sud, during the Second World War, recovered more than Rs. 20,000 as undercharges from many Marwari merchants of Tinsukia including Shewchand Rai and Jagadish Prasad Modi. Many Marwari merchants including Shewchand and Jagadish, in violation of war restrictions and without any permit, brought huge quantities of prohibited goods by Railway to Tinsukia and those goods were detained by Sud and the Station Master with the result those merchants suffered a colossal loss and became his enemy, and to remove him from Tinsukia by procuring his dismissal from the Railway service they entered into conspiracy with Datta to institute and maliciously instituted a criminal case on false charges created by them against him and another Railway employee. Sud was acquitted from those false charges but was convicted on a different case made out by the trying Magistrate and was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for six months on October 31, 1945. Due to the said conviction he was dismissed from his service with effect from October 31, 1945. But, thereafter he was honorably acquitted by the Appellate Court on March 31, 1946.

(3.) Sud also filed a suit in this Court being Suit No. 692 of 1947 against Jagadish and Shewchand claiming large sums of money as damages on the same cause of action and the reason why he could not make Datta a Defendant in that suit was that the notice under Sec. 80 of the Code was not then served on him.