KADER SUNDAR Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The Sessions Judge concurring with the four assessors, has convicted the 29 appellants for belonging to a gang of persons associated for the purpose of habitually committing dacoity and he has sentenced appellants Nos. 2 and 27 to transportation for life and the other appellants to rigorous imprisonment for seven or five years. The trial of the case occupied two months in the Court of Session, but the substantial question for determination is a simple one, namely, whether the approver, Bayan Sandar, has been adequately corroborated in respect of each of the appellants. Six appellants Nos. 8, 10, 14, 15, 17, 26 may be excluded at the outset, because the learned Deputy Legal Remembrancer intimated during the hearing, that he was unable to support their convictions. There lemain 23 appellants including two (Nos. 2 and 18) who made confessions in the Magistrate s Court.

(2.) The case for the Crown is that the Sandars are a semi-criminal tribe, dwelling in boats, wandering and predatory by habit and instinct, that the appellants belonged to a gang of Sandars operating during the years 1891--1909, in the Districts of Bogra, Pubna, Rungpur, Mymensingh and Rajshahye, and that the numerous dacoities that took place were the work of this gang which, however, did not invariably consist of the same persons but committed dacoities in detachments.

(3.) Bayan Sandar, the approver, was convicted in the Gadakhali Dacoity case in February 1909. Subsequently, on the 11th April 1909, he made a detailed confession to a Magistrate of the crimes he had been guilty of, as a member of the gang, and this was "verified" by another Magistrate. On this basis, the 29 appellants were sent up for trial with the result we have mentioned. 3. The Sessions Judge, after reciting the history of the initiation of the case and stating the general effect of the evidence of Bayan, proceeds to give, in tabular form a list of the dacoities and thefts in which Bayan implicated himself and the appellants who are his relations.