VENKATACHALA GOUNDAN Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a reference under Section 307, Criminal P.C. Fifteen persons were charged before the Sessions Judge, Trichinopoly, with dacoity. The jury acquitted one of them and convicted the rest. The Judge thought that acceptance of their verdict would involve a grave miscarriage of justice and has recommended that it be set aside. A Full Bench of this Court has in Veerappa Goundan V/s. Emperor A.I.R. 1928 Mad. 1186, held that the jury is primarily the tribunal to find the facts and that it is not for the High Court to interfere with the verdict of a jury unless it is unreasonable. Mr. Ethiraj has pressed us most urgently not to put too narrow a construction on this ruling. It is not, of course, for us to criticize it, but I think it advisable to correct two statements made in the course of the judgment of the learned Chief Justice. The first is that the rule laid down in Solomon V/s. Bitton [1881] 8 Q.B.D. 176 is enshrined in an even more definite form in the Indian statute, so far as appeals are concerned.

(2.) It is not. Solomon V/s. Bitton [1881] 8 Q.B.D. 176 was a case of an application for a new trial on the ground that the verdict was against the weight of evidence. In India, there is no appeal on the facts, but only on points of law. The second is that the Calcutta High Court has inclined preponderantly to what may be described as the English view. That is no longer correct. The latest Calcutta case on the point is Emperor V/s. Ramchandra Roy , Cuming, J., observed that the decisions seemed to vary from the extreme view that the High Court should be very reluctant to interfere with a verdict of a jury to the view that the High Court in dealing with these references is to be guided by the plain words of the Code and then went on to say: Speaking for myself, I have always thought that I am upon far firmer ground, if I adhere to the strict words of the Code and do not attempt to interpret the Code in the light of the practice in other countries where the law and conditions are different.

(3.) That is, of course, the proper method of construction, as their Lordships of the Judicial Committee have pointed out more than once, to interpret the language of the statute as it stands, uninfluenced by considerations of what the law may be elsewhere.