SITARAM AHIR Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application presented on behalf of 8 persons who have been convicted under Section 353, Indian Penal Code, and each sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for six months. An appeal by the petitioners was dismissed by the Additional District Magistrate. The ease for the prosecution was that they had assaulted a junior Sub-Inspector of Police Babu Lachmi Shankar Prasad Singh of Gopalgunj police station while acting in the exercise of his duty.

(2.) The officer named had gone to village Semrahi on 14 November 1942 under the orders of the officer in charge of the police station in connexion with the investigation of a dacoity case, but the present occurrence has nothing to do with that case. One Gokhul Kurmi came to the junior Sub-Inspector at 6 P.M. and informed him that Sitaram Ahir and others had committed theft of paddy from the field of the informant. The junior Sub-Inspector not being an officer in charge of a police station drew up a fard bian which he forwarded to Gopalgunj police station to be entered and numbered as a first information report by the officer in charge of the police station under Section 154, Criminal P.C. On the next day he visited the place of occurrence of the new cases that had been reported to him and took up an investigation. It may be noticed that it is for the officer in charge of a police station to entertain first information report under Section 154 and to proceed to the spot and investigate under Section 157 of the Code unless he "shall depute one of his subordinate officers" to proceed and investigate. In the present instance the junior Sub-Inspector appears to have acted without authority in taking up an investigation of a case which he had not received as officer in charge of a police station under Section 154, neither had he been deputed to investigate it under Section 157.

(3.) Having examined some witnesses, it is said that he observed a trail of paddy leading to I the house of Sitaram and his family. Those persons it seems told the Sub-Inspector that they had indeed cut and removed the paddy, but that the field on which it was grown was their own and they had themselves grown and cut the crop. The junior Sub-Inspector next proposed to search the house of Sitaram and his brothers, in presence of search witnesses, but they stood up to him and refused to allow the search to be made. They were armed with lathis and assumed a threatening attitude. One of them Sitaram actually raised his lathi to strike the Sub-Inspector, but it was warded off, by a dafadar and a chowkidar. The proposed search was then abandoned.