RAKHAL CHANDRA DAS Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by three accused persons who have been tried before a Special Tribunal sitting under the powers conferred by the Bengal Criminal Law Amendment Act. The charges were in respect of an alleged dacoity or attempted dacoity upon a certain bus which on 11th September last was going from Rajshahye to Natore carrying passengers and also stopping at the post offices on the way in order to pick up the mails. The bus in question was being driven by witness 3 in the case Ramkrishna and there were certain employees of the Bus Company and there were also certain passengers who had got into the bus. In the driver's seat there was the driver, Satis the manager of the company and a certain other person. In the mail box or the middle part of the bus, there were witness 1 Ashutosh and witness Balavi (P.W. 17). The witnesses Khitish, Sukumar and certain others were in the back portion which has been referred to as the body of the bus. What happened was that after the bus had reached Pathia motor stand which was about 19 miles from Rajshahye and about 9 miles from Natore, one of the passengers in the bus asked the driver to stop on the ground that his watch had been dropped. The driver was unwilling to do so but soon of the other passengers apparently induced him to stop and he stopped the bus though the engine was left running. Thereupon, certain passengers inside the bus got out, raised the cry "hands up," one or more of them broke the headlights and punctured the front tyres and one or more stood over the driver threatening him with a dagger and threatening the people in the mail box to get down. The passenger who had been sitting in the front next to the manager got down and fired two shots with a revolver. He may have intended and probably did intend to hit the driver but he hit the manager Sates who was sitting next to him once in the arm and once in the chest. One of the dacoit passengers is said to have remained at the door of the bus with a dagger in order to prevent any of the other passengers in the bus from getting out. As the driver was not bit by the revolver he started the bus and in the end the bus got away and ultimately reached Natore. It appears according to the prosecution case that the accused Sushil who was at the back of the bus guarding the door was taken by surprise as the bus went off and he appears to have been thrown from the bus and to have sustained certain injuries in that way.

(2.) The commissioners in a very careful judgment have set out the whole narrative of the events which throw light upon this case. We find that certain persons went to the police station. We find what the people in the police station did, how they came along a part of the road, how they made a search list of what had been discovered and how they came ultimately to the police station of Natore. Curiously enough late in that evening the accused Sushil was brought to the police station, and it appears that he had been found in the field or premises of a certain agriculturist at a considerable distance to the south of the road along which the motor bus was going. The agriculturist called in his munib who advised him that the police should be given notice and Sushil was taken to the thana. There is evidence that he at first, at ail events, gave a false name and said that he belonged to a place called Sherpur. It would appear from the medical evidence that he had sustained a certain amount of concussion because there was bleeding from his ear, which showed that this had happened, and it is probably true that he was in a semiconscious condition at the time when he was found and also even at the time when he was taken to the police station. Proceeding upon the suspicious feature of this discovery near about the spot where the attack upon the bus had taken place, of a young man suffering in this way the police appear to have commenced investigation as to the antecedents and past history of Sushil, and in that way they discovered that Sushil and his co-accused Dharani were students of the Rangpore College, and they further found that these two had come on the 2nd to a mess at Rajshahye and that they had afterwards returned there on the 4 and stayed in the room belonging to the accused Rakbal until the 11th, the date of the occurrence. It appears that on the 7 Rakhal joined them and there is evidence to show that at about 6-30 p.m. on that day Rakhal was seen in Rajshahye, so that he was not a person who could have taken part in the attack on the bus, if the prosecution evidence is to be believed. In the end the commissioners have given full and adequate reasons for their finding that there was this attack upon the bus as alleged by the prosecution. They have also given reasons and good reasons, for finding that more than five persons took part in the attack and they have further given reasons for finding that the object of this attack on the bus was to secure the mail, there being indeed no other object that could very well be served by this attack so far as the evidence discloses.

(3.) The case therefore comes back as regards each accused to the question whether it is shown that he was a party to the attack; in other words whether the evidence of identification is sufficiently ample to justify the Court in holding that each prisoner has been satisfactorily identified.