RADHA KISHUN MARWARI Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The question for decision in this case is whether an Inspector of Excise acting in the course of his duties is a "Police Officer" within the meaning of Section 25, Evidence Act, and whether a confession made to him is admissible. The trend of the decisions in Bengal, with one exception to which I shall refer has been to answer this question in the negative but a difficulty has arisen owing to a judgment of a Full Bench of the Bombay High Court in the case of Nanoo Sheikh Ahmed V/s. Emperor in which the learned Judges arrived at the opposite conclusion. With the greatest respect to the Bombay High Court I find myself in complete disagreement with the arguments which found favour in that case and have been presented before us and I think the fallacy is attributable to two causes.

(2.) In the first place a judgment of Sir Richard Garth in the case of The Queen v. Hurribole Chunder Ghose [1876] 1 Cal. 207 has been misunderstood and this misunderstanding has been the source of frequent error. The facts in that case were of a very simple character. The Deputy Commissioner of Police for Calcutta who was also a Magistrate had issued a warrant for the arrest of the accused Hurribole. He was brought before the Deputy Commissioner at his private residence over the Police Office and there made a confession in the presence of the Deputy Commissioner and of two Inspectors of Police. One of the said Inspectors reduced the confession to writing and it was signed and acknowledged by Hurribole as correct in their presence. It was argued that the Deputy Commissioner was not a member of the Calcutta police force It was admitted that he was a Police Officer but although a Superintendent of Police in the mofussil he was a Deputy Commissioner only in Calcutta where the confession was recorded and the confession was recorded before him as a Magistrate.

(3.) The Court held that although the Deputy Commissioner of Police in Calcutta was not a member of the police force within the meaning of Bengal Act (4 of 1866) that he was nevertheless a Police Officer quite as much as the more ordinary members of the force. In other words Sir Richard Garth held that the term "Police Officer" in the Evidence Act, included all Police Officers and not merely a member of the police force within the meaning of the Bengal Act. He said: I consider that the term "Police Officer" should be read not in any strict technical sense, but according to its more comprehensive and popular meaning. In common parlance and amongst the generality of people, the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner of Police are understood to be officeres of police, or in other words, "Police Officers" quite as much as the more ordinary members of the force, and although in the case of a gentleman in Mr. Lambert's position there would not be of course the same danger of a confession being extorted from a prisoner by any undue means, there is no doubt that Mr. Lambert's official character and the very place where he sits as Deputy Commissioner, is not without its terrors in the eyes of an accused person; and I think it better in construing a section such as the 25th, which was intended as a wholesome protection to the accused, to construe its widest and most popular signification.