EMPEROR Vs. BALKRISHNA WAMAN KULKARNI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by the Government of Bombay, and the appeal arises in the following circumstances:

(2.) One Dattatraya Anant Kulkarni was an officiating kulkarni of a certain village between February 1908 and September 1911. Between 11th April and 25th July 1911 he collected a sum of Rs. 189 from the village rayats for certain irrigation cesses. Receipts were given by Dattatraya Anant to the paying rayats, but in fact Dattatraya misappropriated these moneys. He has been on his own trial convicted on his plea of guilty. He admits his guilt also when examined as a witness in the trial of this respondent.

(3.) In September 1.911 this Dattatraya Anant was transferred to another village. He handed over charge to one Dattatraya Hari, who is a witness in the respondent s case. He did not hand over the account books and other papers. In December 1911 the present respondent Balkrishna Waman, who was a petition-writer known to Dattatraya Anant, learnt that the rayats, whose money had been misappropriated, were on the point of complaining against Dattatraya Anant in regard to the misappropriations. He, therefore, warned Dattatraya Anant and proposed that he, the respondent, should forge certain challans in order to protect the fraud which Dattatraya Anant had committed. The point about these challans was that, in the essential parts of them, they constituted receipts from the Taluka Treasury acknowledging payments made into the Treasury by the village Kulkarni. In pursuance of this arrangement Dattatraya Anant wrote the body of the challans, while the endorsements and signatures of the Taluka Treasury officials were forged by the respondent. It is these endorsements and signatures which, if genuine, constitute a receipt in the hands of the village Kulkarni.