EMPEROR Vs. MIHI LAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a reference by the learned Sessions Judge of Kumaun recommending that the commitment made by a Magistrate under which Mihi Lal, Pyare Lal, Kunj Behari Lal and Bishan Giri have been committed to Sessions to take their trial under Secs.366 and 120-B, I.P.C., be quashed. Section 215, Cri. P.C., ordains that: a commitment once made under Section 213 by a competent Magistrate...can be quashed by the High Court only, and only on a point of law.

(2.) Now there may be cases in which there is no evidence to warrant a commitment; then there may be another class of cases in which commitment is made on no legal evidence at all. In such cases action may be taken under 8. 215, Criminal P.C. This Court however will not quash commitments where there is a prima facie case against the persons who have been committed to take their trial to a Court of Session. In such cases no legal question arises and so the Court has no power to quash the commitment. It appears to me that this aspect of the case was not brought to the notice of the learned Sessions Judge by the Public Prosecutor or by counsel for the defence. I may in connexion with this matter refer to the opinion of Harrington J. expressed in Sheobux Ram V/s. Emperor (1905) 9 CWN 829 where he made the following observations: The proper test to be applied to decide the question whether a commitment ought or ought not to be made on the facts is this- assuming that the whole of the evidence telling against the accused is true, is there a case which a Judge at a trial can leave to a jury? If the evidence is such that a Judge would have been bound to rule that there was no evidence on which a jury could convict, then a committal ought not to be made. If there was any evidence which called for an answer, however great the preponderance in favour of the prisoner might be, then the committal was proper.

(3.) This view was accepted by the Rangoon High Court in Mohammad Moidin v. Emperor (1924) 11 AIR Rang 165. The learned Judge who decided that case remarked that the High Court had no concern with the question of credibility of the evidence when there is in fact some evidence on the committal record which would justify the Sessions Judge in leaving the question of guilt or innocence to the jury.