DHAJU MANDAL Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) During the latter part of 1930 and during 1931 there were a great many burglaries in Dhanbad and its neighbourhood. On the evening of 19 April 1932, Gondu Mallik was arrested with two companions in suspicious circumstances near the Dhanbad Masonic Lodge; and ultimately Gondu Mallik was bound down for a year under Section 109, Criminal P.C. In the meantime he had made a statement to the police, giving an account of his complicity in a large number of burglaries, which led to the arrest of 10 men who were prosecuted in due course under Section 110, Criminal P.C.

(2.) The order against six of them was made absolute, though only for one year by the trying Magistrate; and their appeal was dismissed by the District Magistrate of Manbhum. Three of these men, Dhaju Mondal, Bhusan Mandal and Peary Singh, have moved the High Court in revision. The substantial grounds on which the application was admitted appear to have been that sufficient attention had not been given by the Courts below to the question of whether the evidence of the accomplice was corroborated in material particulars, and that the case against each of the accused had not been considered by the Courts separately and in sufficient detail.

(3.) The principal witness for the prosecution was Gondu Mallik. Mr. A.C. Ray, on behalf of the petitioners does not of course suggest that to act on the uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice is illegal; but he points out that it is only in exceptional cases that the evidence of an accomplice can be accepted without material corroboration; and he argues that this particular case is so far removed from those cases in which the uncorroborated evidence of an accomplice might fairly be accepted, that there is special reason for requiring material corroboration affecting each of the persons named, since the accomplice Gondu Mallik had particular grounds for implicating at least three of the persons accused in this case, Dhaju Mondal and his brother Bhusan with the Chaukidar Aklu Dome.