KIAMUDDI KARIKAR Vs. KING-EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by Kiamuddi Karikar, who was tried by the learned Additional Sessions Judge of Dacca and a jury. By the unanimous verdict of the jury he was found guilty of an offence under Section 147, I.P.C. and of an offence under Section 325 read with Section 149. The jury found him not guilty under Section 325, Section 304 and Section 304 read with Section 149.

(2.) Shortly stated the facts were these: The police were summoned for the purpose of preventing a considerable number of people from fishing in a certain tank. In the first instance, the police were attacked, but the next thing that happened was that the people, who had assembled for the purpose of fishing, apparently gave way and retreated. The allegation was that then some of the people, who were with the police, and the police themselves pursued the retreating crowd. The deceased man, who was aged about sixty, fell at the rear of the crowd, and he was so severely beaten that he died on the spot.

(3.) The accused, according to the evidence, was alleged to have been one of those who beat the deceased man. But, as I have already said, the jury acquitted him of the charge under Section 325 and also of the charge under 8. 304. The learned vakil, who argued the case very well, relied mainly upon an alleged misdirection as to the accused being a member of an unlawful assembly. It is clear that the assembly, of which the accused was a member, was in the first instance a lawful assembly, and that was pointed out by the learned Judge. But the case of the prosecution was that after the people, who had come to fish in the tank, retreated and after there was no further necessity for any violence, some of those who formed the police party turned, themselves into an unlawful assembly with the common object of unnecessarily beating some of those who had come to fish and the learned vakil argued that the learned Judge had not sufficiently directed the jury upon this point.