EMPEROR Vs. SOOBA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application made on behalf of the Government for the revision of two orders of the learned Sessions Judge of Allahabad dated 23 December 1930 and 19 January 1931, releasing the opposite parties, who are in all 17 in number, on hail. Those persons have been arrested by the police in connexion with alleged offences under Secs.240, 241, 232, 235 and 120-B, I, P.C., and in the affidavit filed on behalf of the Grown by the Deputy Superintendent of Police, G. I. D., it is stated that an organization extending over several provinces exists for the purpose of counterfeiting coin, and that the accused in the present case are charged with being members of this organization or conspiracy. The offences are not bailable, but I am informed that the Magistrate to whom the accused were sent at first released some of them on bail, but when others made an application to the District Magistrate, he refused bail on the ground that the offences were nonbailable, and in consequence applications were made to the Sessions Judge, on which he passed the orders which I am now asked to cancel. The first order was passed on the applications of Sooba and Mohardin (opposite parties 1 and 2) who had then been in custody for three and two and a half months respectively, and the second application was made by fifteen others, the dates of whose arrests are given in the order of the Sessions Judge. The latest of these dates is 16 November 1930.

(2.) The Sessions Judge allowed the applications for bail on the general ground that the applicants had been in jail for a long time, and that by the time the investigation was completed they might easily have been in jail for seven months without being put on their trial, but in dealing with the earlier application he remarked that the only section which appeared to him to be applicable was Section 167, Criminal P. G., as the case had not reached the stage of an inquiry" as no evidence of any kind had been recorded by the Magistrate.

(3.) This question of procedure has been argued at considerable length before me, and it must be admitted that the law, as laid down in the Criminal Procedure Code, is not altogether free from ambiguity. Under Section 61 no police officer may detain in custody a person arrested without warrant for more than 21 hours in the absence of a special order of a Magistrate under Section 167, and under Section 167 a Magistrate to whom an accused person is forwarded by the police on the grounds that it is believed that the accusation or information against him is well founded, may authorize the detention of the accused for a period "not exceeding fifteen days in the whole." This is the section that the learned Sessions Judge considered to be applicable at any rate, in the case of the first application, but it is clear that if it does apply the accused should have been released after fifteen days from their arrest. It is in fact admitted on behalf of the Crown that if this section applies the present application for the revision of the Sessions Judge's order must fail.