ANGNOO SINGH Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is one of the most remarkable cases under Section 110 which has ever come under my notice. There are various reasons why I say that. In the first place, the procedure which has been adopted from first to last appears to me to be an abuse of the section. Twelve men were charged together, or notices were issued against them together, under this section, I will not say without anything upon the evidence seriously connecting them, but with a very superficial colouring of evidence and a vague, general and hearsay description connecting them together as partly ring-leaders of a gang, partly notorious dacoits and partly habitual receivers. The Police in support of this case called a variety of witnesses of every sort and description to establish the character which they sought to prove, amounting altogether to 76 in number, and having little or nothing in common except the fact to which most of them spoke: (a) that they lived at least 8 miles away from the village of the defendants, and (b) that they had no personal knowledge of them themselves. Indeed, it is impossible not to read the principal evidence for the prosecution which has been relied upon by the Magistrates in the Courts below without acquiring the impression that it was really a gang case which the Police was running on hearsay evidence under the guise of a badmashi charge under Section No. The witnesses who were put in the box were not disposed of at one hearing and each by one piece of evidence but they were scattered about and divided up in the most bewildering fashion, so that it is a work of considerable magnitude and one almost impossible of accomplishment by any Appellate Court without the assistance of somebody who has minutely studied the record to trace the sequence of statements of any particular witness. But, so far as I can tell, the result of this voluminous and chaotic recording of evidence was that the defence evidence and the examination of the accused under Section 364 was not even reached until the 9 of September 1921, fully two months after the hearing had been commenced. Apart from any other feature of this case, it seems to me very hard, almost oppressive, to any set of defendants to charge them together in this way, unless the whole of the evidence against all of them is precisely the same and they are to be dealt with on the same facts, and compel them to fight each his own individual battle during a prolonged enquiry, a great deal of which concerns for the moment only one out of the general body. I have myself upset orders under this section where the evidence against one person charged has been used in the judgment as evidence against another not mentioned by the particular witness. There is always a danger of that, and a danger of its unconsciously operating on the mind of the Tribunal, even though such operation does not manifest itself in the judgment, and if there were no other feature in the case, I should have been disposed to set aside the proceedings on that ground alone disregarding the merits, and directing the Magistrate to hold a further enquiry into the case of each accused separately or each, batch of accused who could fairly be said to be classified under evidence common to each individual member of the batch. But that would be a great hardship upon the defendants, and there are many other points in this case which render the further consideration of this question superfluous except that I recommend these observations to the consideration of the District Magistrates in general without laying down any rule or consulting any section: common sense and common justice dictate that proceedings against a man for badmashi should be confined to himself alone, unless the case is that he has a confederate or a partner to whom all the evidence is equally applicable.

(2.) A further objection based upon the same procedure, but entirely separate and independent, is the objection which, to my mind, arises out of the enormous mass of witnesses in this case on the prosecution side. There are seven defendants in all, and, although it may not be out of the way in a heavy gang case, it seems to me monstrous and to amount to something like persecution that each individual in a group of persons, supposed each in his own way to be a badmash, should be condemned to submit to and to employ Counsel for the examination and cross- examination of a number like 76 witnessed during a proceeding lasting over two months. If the Police cannot satisfy an experienced. Magistrate with less than 76 witnesses or in less time than two months that a man is a badmash, the sooner they surrender the task at its inception the better for the interests of the public justice. It cannot be the good of anybody that such unheard of prolixity and waste of public time should be indulged in as was indulged in this case. The Magistrate himself observed upon this feature saying: "if the reputation of a man cannot be proved by the evidence of 10 or 12 witnesses, it cannot be proved by 500." But a feeble protest of that kind is quite useless, and it is the duty of the District Magistrate, if he thinks that 10 or 12 witnesses are as a general rule sufficient for a case of this kind and he finds one of his Subordinate Officers permitting 76, to lay down some rule of common sense to guide his subordinates in the exercise of their discretion, not a caste-iron rule like the section of a Code, but something to enable them to guide their own proceedings within reasonable limits. The Magistrate's main complaint on this head seems to have been the heavy record which he says has taken him a long time to read, and digest. I have already taken a day and a half over this case, but I have not read, and have declined to read, the record to which the Magistrate refers. If he read it, it is very much to his credit, although it must have consumed an enormous amount of public time, but whether he ever digested it, is a matter which I shall proceed to consider in a few moments.

(3.) Naturally enough, the defendants confronted with this mass of voluminous evidence, or as one might describe it massed attack , resorted to the expedient of trying to defeat the prosecution at their own game. I am not impressed with the tactics which, guided their decision nor with the result, but I cannot blame them and I do not quite know what they were to do unless they had somebody in charge of their case strong enough to protest against the public scandal of the prosecution proceedings, and to entreat the Magistrate to use his common sense and get a few selected and relevant witnesses put forward by each defendant. The result has been that in this case the total number of witnesses, so far as I can discover by a rough computation, and there is naturely considerable margin for error, amounts to 402, and the time spent on this proceeding before a Magistrate specially appointed to hear it, was no less than 6 months. I imagine that this proceeding is without parallel in the administration of this section. It seems to me to amount to a scandalous waste of public time and magisterial energy and to be a very serious infliction upon the defendants who have asserted continuously before me through their Counsel that these proceedings have practically exhausted their financial resources. As I have said before, if it is going to take the Police and the Magistrate anything like six months, or even more than a month, to prove badmashi, they had much better drop them altogether and devote one-tenth of their efforts to catching one of the miscreants in the accomplishment of the crime in which he is said to be daily engaged.