NIDHI SINGH AND ANR. Vs. STATE AND ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners who are brothers, were convicted if offences under sections 332 and 342 of the Indian Penal Code and each was sentenced to suffer rigorous imprisonment for one year under section 332 of the Indian Penal Code No separate sentence was, however, passed in respect of the offence under section 342 of the Indian Penal Code.

(2.) The case against the petitioners was as follows : A man called Rahamat Ali Shah purchased a deer which, however, ran away from his custody and remained untraced. He filed an ejahar on the 13th of March, on the basis of which a case under section 411 of the Indian Penal Code was started. The Sub-Inspector in charge of the investigation found it necessary to search the house of the petitioners at Debipore as also the house of one Mohan Tanti at Rukundipore, so as to be able to seize the deer. The Police Officer then approached Sri G. P. Bose, Magistrate, First Class, who at the time was hearing a case at Ratua, and prayed for a search warrant. Instead of making an appropriate order for the issue of a search warrant, the learned Magistrate endorsed the petition with the word "approved". No search warrant, however, was issued. The Police Officer, however, armed with this piece of paper, went to the house of the petitioners, but found them absent. There were present at the house at the time the petitioners' father and a brother-in-law. The Police party consisting of the Sub-Inspector, a constable and a dafadar entered the petitioners' house and seized the deer from a cow-shed inside the house and brought it to the outer court-yard, where the investigating officer started to prepare a search list. At that time the petitioners returned home and are said to have abused the investigating officer and to have assaulted with a stick, the constable, who tried to intervene. The petitioners are also said to have snatched away the seizure list and to have torn it up. According to the prosecution, the petitioners also snatched away the spectacles of the Sub-Inspector.

(3.) Upon the above allegations the petitioners were charged, tried, convicted and sentenced as aforesaid. As the petitioners were acquitted of a charge under section 147 of the Indian Penal Code, it is not necessary to go into the facts as affecting such a charge.