EMPEROR Vs. MIR MAZARALI INAYATALI KURESHI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application to revise the order of the learned Sessions Judge of Poona dismissing the applicant's appeal from the decision of the Assistant Sessions Judge of Poona. The applicant and a second offender were tried by the Assistant Sessions Judge of Poona with the aid of a jury on a charge under a 376 of the Indian Penal Code. The jury's verdict was unanimous, and, in accordance with it, the accused were convicted of the offence with which they had been tried and sentenced to four years rigorous imprisonment.

(2.) The facts which were alleged against the accused were that a woman named Chandrabhaga, who seems to have abandoned her husband and thereafter for sometime to have lived a wandering life, probably with prostitutes, complained to the Head Constable in charge of the police-station at Ghodnadi that she had been abducted and raped by a certain person. Her complaint was recorded and an investigation into it was begun by the Head Constable and was ultimately taken up by the Sub-Inspector of the Police station, on his return to his headquarters. Chandrabhaga was a young girl and had no home to go to, and she was consequently permitted to stay in the Sub-Inspector's Office at the police-station. Nothing is alleged to have occured there on the first night of her stay. On the second, it was said that, towards the middle of the night, after the office had been more or less closed and while Chandrabhaga was there, there being in the office at the same time, the two accused and the guest of accused No. 1, the accused each in turn went over to where Chandrabhaga was sleeping, and raped her. This is the charge on which the two accused were convicted.

(3.) Two points have been raised in this application. The first is that the joint trial was irregular, the rape by each of the accused being isolated acts not forming a single transaction, and, secondly, that inadmissible evidence has been admitted in the shape of statements to police-officers made in the course of the investigation, the admission of which is prohibited by Section 162 of the Criminal Procedure Code, and that the jury were so misdirected by the learned Assistant Sessions Judge, who invited them to consider these inadmissible pieces of evidence. We have consequently been asked to interfere with the judgment and sentence in revision.