MALLA MAHMADOO Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These are two appeals by the accused Kesha and Gul Mohammed who were convicted and sentenced as follows by the learned Ses. J., Ajmer-Merwara, by his order dated 19-9-1947. The applt. Kesha has been found guilty of offences under Ss. 366, 366A and 372, Penal Code and sentenced to undergo 3 years' R. I. under each count, all the three sentences having been ordered to run concurrently. Applt. Gul Mohammad has been convicted of offences under Ss. 368 and 372, Penal Code, and sentenced to 3 years' R. I. for each offence, the sentences having been ordered to run concurrently.

(2.) The applt. Kesha has preferred his appeal through the Supdt., Central Jail, Ajmer, where he is now confined, and the applt. Gul Mohammad has filed his appeal through his counsel Mr. S.G. Khan. The two appeals being inter-connected and arising from one and the same judgment, have been heard together, and are being dealt with jointly by this order.

(3.) The facts of the case have been enumerated at some length in para. 3 of the learned Ses. J's. judgment. There is no doubt that so far as applt. Kesha is concerned, he was the main culprit as it was he who met the two girls Hadi and Mothi in Kutchery Road, Ajmer, on a day in the third week of July 1946, and on the pretext that he was going to take them to their father, kept them looked up in his own house for the night, and took them on the following day via Merwar Junction to Sind, where both the girls were sold to Gul Mohammad for the sum of about Rs. 550. I have examined the evidence in the case carefully and I see no reason to disagree from the conclusion arrived at by the learned Ses. J., that Kesha is guilty of offences under Ss. 366 and 366A, Penal Code; but so far as the offence under S. 372, Penal Code, is concerned, I am inclined to think that since the sale of the girls took place in a village in the Province of Sind, where Gul Mohammad at the time resided, the offence was committed outside the jurisdiction of the Criminal Cts. of Ajmer. Merwara and therefore technically Kesha could not be tried in this Province for such an offence. The same reasoning will also apply to the case of accused Gul Mohammad so far as the offence under S. 372, Penal Code, is concerned of which he has also been convicted. The evidence is that it was in Gul Mohammad's village in Sind where attempts were made to invite purchasers; two men named Gullan and Umar appeared and the girls were sold to them for Rs. 640. Each man was to gat one of the girls. It is true the girl Hadi in her statement to the police admitted that she had once stayed in Kesha's house for some time on her way to Lassaria, but there is nothing in this admission to imply that Hadi at any time had been on terms of sexual intimacy with Kesha. In fact it appears the main culprit in the case who is Kesha took advantage of the fact that he had known the two girls and their fathers, and that is how he appears to have inveigled them into the false belief that he was going to restore them to their father. The subsequent course of events during the course of which the girls' ornaments were removed from their person and taken possession of by Kesha, their clothes were changed and they were made to wear old clothes, they were threatened with beating when they enquired on their way to Sind where their father was, the fact that they were tutored to say that they were Muslim girls and not Hindu, that even though they wept and begged to be taken back to their homes the purchasers Gullan and Umar did not agree, corroborate the prosecution case that these two young married Hindu girls could not have left their parental home and the protection of their husbands voluntarily, and agreed to being sold to some unknown badmashes in Sind.