STATE Vs. LEHNA SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a State appeal against the acquittal of Lehna Singh respondent who was convicted by a magistrate at Ludhiana under Section 19, Arms Act and sentenced to three months' rigorous imprisonment but was acquitted in appeal by the Additional Sessions Judge.

(2.) THE facts of the case are quite simple, the story being that in consequence of information that the accused was keeping an unlicensed rifle, Assistant Sub-Inspector Santokh Singh of the Arms staff went to the village of the accused, who, after being questioned, admitted that he had concealed a rifle in a manure heap lying outside one of the walls of his house and thereafter took out the rifle P-1 from underneath the manure heap. The recovery was supported by the evidence of Harcharan Singh and Rattan Singh P. Ws.

(3.) THE accused denied his guilt but offered no explanation of the case against him and produced two witnesses of ordinary type who denied that any rifle was recovered from the possession of or through the agency of the accused. The evidence of these witnesses certainly could not influence the decision of the case one way or the other, and in fact it has not been relied on even by the learned Additional Sessions Judge in acquitting the accused.