SITA RAM Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These two applications in revision are by the same petitioner. They arise out of two petitions filed by the petitioner before the Court of Mr. B.M. Singh, Honorary Magistrate 1st Class, Sasaram, for return to the petitioner certain articles which formed the basis of two trials of the petitioner under Section 411, Penal Code. Some articles were seized from the shop of the petitioner at Dehri and some other articles were seized from a ditch near his house at Nasriganj and these seizures formed the subject-matter of two separate trials. The Honorary Magistrate, Mr. B.M. Singh, who tried these two cases against the petitioner, had convicted the petitioner is both the cases. On appeal, however, the petitioner was acquitted in both the cases by Mr. S.N. Chaudhury, Additional Sessions Judge of Shahabad. In one of these cases he has made the following observations :

(2.) Against these two orders of the Honorary Magistrate there were appeals filed in the Court of the learned Sessions Judge of Shahabad. The learned Judge, on appeal, after enumerating some of the articles, was of the view that those articles could not have belonged to the petitioner and he observed:

(3.) To appreciate the points raised it is necessary further to state that the telephone line between Dehri and Sone East Bank was not working well, On getting that information, Ram Tawakal, a peon of the Telephone Department, went to survey the line, as a result of which he found that at two places the wire had been cut to the extent of one span at each place. He went to the Dehri police Station and lodged first information. In consequence of the first information, several places were searched including the house of one Deonarain Thathera, father of the petitioner, at Nasriganj and from a ditch near his house some Wire nettings of copper and other things were recovered and seized. A month later the Rohtas Industries Ltd. laid claim to the articles mentioned above. The police, therefore, submitted a charge-sheet and the petitioner was put on trial. It appears from the judgment of the learned Additional Sessions Judge on appeal against the conviction of the petitioner that P. W. 7, who was the Electrical Engineer of the Rohtas Industries Ltd., had stated that there was no record with the Rohtas Industries to show that the articles in question were even stolen. In the other judgment the learned Additional Sessions Judge referring to three copper wire rolls has said that Mr. Perkin (P.W. 6), the Engineering Supervisor Telegraphs, had admitted that there was no mark of identification on the wires from which he could say that these were identical with the wires stolen and that he had further admitted that wires similar to the wires in question were sold in market by the Government after the war. The other witness, P.W. 7, had stated that there were no marks on the articles in question and because there were no such marks as he had put on similar rolls of wire, he was not in a position to say that those wires shown to him in Court were the same.