EMPEROR Vs. SHEO DAYAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by the Local Government against the acquittal of certain persons by the learned Sessions Judge of Cawnpore. Originally there were 41 persons prosecuted by the police on charges of riot, murder, dacoity and arson, the crimes being dated 25 March 1931, and of the 41 persons prosecuted, 24 were committed to the Sessions, and the learned Sessions Judge acquitted all the 24 persons. The Local Government filed an appeal against the acquittal of 9 persons, and of those 9 persons, 3 persons subsequently absconded. We therefore have the following six persons before us as respondents: (2) Sheo Swarup, (4) Chhote, (5) Ram Narain, (7) Gobardhan, (8) Manohar Singh and (9) Puttu Singh Kayastha.

(2.) The charge is that during the Cawnpore riots of March 1931, there was a riot with murder dacoity and arson committed in the Bengali Mahal, a mahal of Cawnpore city where the majority of inhabitants are Hindus and there are a certain number of houses inhabited by Mohamedans.A description of what happened during the riot is given in the evidence of M. Abdur Rauf, a Deputy Magistrate, who was on duty at Cawnpore during the riots, and he states that on 27 March he found some injured persons from Bengali Mahal at Patkapur Mahal, that is, Mt. Bibbo, Mt. Bismillah, Mt. Hafizan and Nur Muhammad alias Munne Khan. The women were injured and burnt, and one of them was pregnant, and he took them away to the hospital. The next morning he took their statements in the hospital, and he had not previously told the women that he was going to take their statements. When he saw them on the previous night of 27 March they were not in a fit state to make statements. The statements of these four persons taken on 28 March 1931, were therefore taken at a very early stage after the occurrence of 25 March. It is in evidence that at that period the whole city of Cawnpore was in a state of turmoil and it was not possible for persons who desired to make reports to the police to make reports because the police were engaged in an endeavour to maintain order, and the usual machinery of recording reports was not available.

(3.) It is to be noted that in the statement of Nur Muhammad recorded on 28th April the names of all the six respondents before us, with the exception of Chhote, are contained. The Magistrate M. Abdur Rauf proceeds to state that he visited Bengali Mahal on 3 April, and he had met certain witnesses Wajid Ali and Muhammad. Yasin before that, and they had stated that the bodies of their relatives were lying buried in the debris of the house in Bengali Mahal. At Bengali Mahal the Magistrate found in the house of Yasin Khan a skull and a skeleton and an amount of debris in various houses, and he got men to excavate the debris, and in the house of Basharat two skeletons were found. In the house of Yasin there were found bones in different places belonging to four different people apparently, and a skull in a corner of the verandah, and two skeletons in the delan. On the first floor there was a bed with bloodstained pyjamas of a woman and some hair of a woman, and near the skeletons in the delan there were pieces of burnt cotton-wool on the top of the skeletons. At the time when he inspected houses in this Bengali Mahal were still burning. At that time he was unable to make any arrangements for having reports recorded as stray assaults were still taking place and the main streets were being patrolled by police and troops and there was a curfew order. There are some 24 reports printed in which different respondents before us are named, the first report being dated 29 March 1931, by Muhammad Yasin, and other reports extending to the first week in April. The principle of the police has been to prosecute only persons who were named in early reports, that is, not later than the first week in April.