MUSAI SINGH Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) At the time of the alleged offences the petitioner was a sazawal of the Bettiah Raj and was entrusted with the work, of collecting rents from the tenants of the Raj. Three tenants are said to have been cheated by him while he was so engaged in the collection of rents. They laid three separate complaints against him before the Magistrate; who, purporting to act under Section 234 of the Criminal Procedure Code, tried the petitioner for the three offences at one trial and framed only one charge, setting out only one offence of cheating in respect of all the three complainants.

(2.) If the Magistrate had treated the three complaints as complaints of distinct offences and had drawn up three separate charges, the procedure would have been without defect. There was no obstacle to the disposal of all three cases at one trial. There was no misjoinder and no contravention of any law limiting the joinder of offences in one indictment: Subramanya Ayyar v. King-Emperor (1901) I.L.R. 25 Mad. 61.

(3.) The defect is one of "duplicity," not of misjoinder: Archbold s Pleading, Edn. 1910, page 76. It was not the mode of trial that was wrong; it was merely the form of the charge.