KRISHNA NANDAN PRASAD VERMA Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner has been convicted under Section 409 of the Penal Code and has been sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for two years and also to pay a fine of Rs. 2,000 or, in default, to undergo further rigorous imprisonment for one year.

(2.) The facts, which have either been admitted or have been found by the courts below to be proved and which are not in dispute any longer, are as follows: The petitioner was employed as the only clerk (called head clerk) in the office of Lady Elgin Zenana Hospital (hereinafter to be referred to as the hospital) at Gaya from before August, 1951, up to the 23rd January, 1953, when he was not under suspension. As clerk, he was in charge of correspondence, office work, accounts, deposits and withdrawals of money, etc. He used to write the cash book and collection register, to prepare chalans for deposit of money in the treasury and to prepare bills for withdrawal of money from the treasury. The hospital was previously managed by a committee; but it was provincialised, that is to say, its management was taken over by the State Government, in 1949. It was directly in charge of a Lady Superintendent; but its administrative head was the Civil Surgeon. Dr. T.K. Sundaram (P.W. 1) was the Lady Superintendent of the hospital from the 17th July, 1951, onwards, and Dr. S. Prasad (P.W. 13) was the Civil Surgeon of Gaya from May, 1952.

(3.) Sources of income of the hospital included rent from paying wards and side rooms as well as charges for confinements and operations. The system was that the senior nurse, for the time being, took a receipt book from the petitioner, realised charges payable from paying patients, issued receipts to these patients, and, at intervals of two to four days, handed over the money collected by her to the petitioner. The nurse concerned as well as the petitioner made endorsements on the back of the last counterfoil of receipt issued by the nurse to the effect that the money collected by the nurse had been paid to, and received by, the petitioner. When one receipt book was exhausted, the senior nurse returned the book containing the counterfoils to the petitioner who issued a fresh receipt book to her. The nurse concerned used to make necessary entries in the paying patients' register showing the names of patients and the amount and nature of realisations from each of them. The nurses who have been examined as Prosecution witnesses in this case are P. W's 2, 7 and 17. P.W. 2 made entries in the paying patients' register from the 18th April to the 8th September, 1951 and again from the 14th November 1951, to the 26th April, 1952, as she was in charge of collections during these periods, P.W. 7 made entries from the 9th September 1951, to the 24th October, 1951 and P.W. 17 made entries from the 28th April to the 28th July, 1952, when they were in charge of the collections. The petitioner, on the other hand, used to enter in the cash book the amounts which he received from the nurses, excluding the share of such receipts which was to be paid to doctors (i.e., the Lady Superintendent and other physicians) and to enter in exercise books (exhibits 7 and 7/a), called doctors' fee books, the shares of receipts which were payable to the doctors. In the collection register, the petitioner used to enter the amounts collected from the hospital under different heads and to note the chalan numbers under which different sums had been deposited in the treasury.