EMPEROR Vs. BRIJNANDAN PRASAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application in revision against an order passed by the learned District Magistrate of Bijnor, directing the twelve applicants to furnish security for keeping the peace under Section 107 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. One of the original applicants has since died and the petition has been prosecuted on behalf of the remaining eleven. I may add that the District Magistrate s immediate object in taking the proceedings resulting in the present order was to provide for the preservation of the public peace in the town of Najibabad during the last Dasehra festival. This has now passed off quietly, and from one point of view it might be said that, even though the period for which the applicants were required to furnish security has not yet expired, it has ceased to be a matter of serious importance whether the Magistrate s order is now affirmed by this Court or set aside. The question, however, is one of some public importance, and, if I may judge from the account of the state of public feeling in the town of Najibabad given in the Magistrate s order, it is unfortunately probable that the matter may come up again in one form or another before the district courts, and eventually before this Court. I think it advisable, therefore, to deal with the application as it stands, that is to say, I propose to consider whether the order under revision was or was not a good and proper order on the materials on the record, at the time when it was passed by the Magistrate on the 8th of September last.

(2.) One point taken in the petition of revision before me is that the District Magistrate has imported into his judgement a number of facts personally known to him, of which there is no legal evidence on the record. The District Magistrate frankly admits that he was necessarily in possession, at the time when he instituted this inquiry, of a great deal of information of one kind or another bearing on the question of the propriety or otherwise of binding over these applicants to keep the peace. He suggests that the parties before him were fully aware of this fact, and that their acquiescence in his proceeding with the inquiry, instead of applying for a transfer of the case to some other court, virtually licensed him to import his own personal knowledge into the decision of the case to such extent as he might think proper. I may say that I regard it as a very satisfactory feature of the case that these applicants, while fully aware that the Magistrate of their district had had occasion to make personal inquiries of various kinds into the question of the disputes pending between different classes of the community in their town, felt such complete confidence in his impartiality and his anxiety to do justice between all classes of the community, that they had no desire to get the inquiry into this particular matter transferred to any other court. At the same time, they were entitled to ask that the final decision should be based simply and entirely upon evidence legally brought on to the record. To some extent at any rate, it seems to me that this has not been done. There are references in the Magistrate s Judgment to confidential papers in his own possession and to other s matters which cannot possibly have been in evidence in the case. It may no doubt have been inevitable under the circumstances that the District Magistrate should have possessed outside knowledge of these matters, but he would have exercised a sounder discretion if he had kept that knowledge out of the Judgment and endeavoured to base his decision entirely upon the relevant evidence in the case.

(3.) Another and more important point raised by this application may be stated in this form : that the findings of fact arrived at, no matter how, by the District Magistrate, are not such as to warrant the order which has been passed requiring these applicants to furnish security. The Magistrate s Judgment is a long one and contains a most interesting exposition of the circumstances which led up to the institution of the present proceeding and of the existing state of parties and of public feeling in the town of Najibabad. I have found it a little difficult, however, to disentangle from this general exposition of the facts the precise findings on the strength of which the order requiring the applicants to furnish security has been passed. What the law requires to justify this order is a finding that these applicants were likely to commit a breach of the peace or disturb the public tranquility, or to do any wrongful act that may probably occasion a breach of the peace or disturb the public tranquility. These provisions have been interpreted by this Court in a number of rulings, beginning with the elaborate exposition of the law to be found in the case of Queen Empress v. Abdul Qadir (1886) I.L.R. 9 All. 452. Of later cases the one most in point is in my opinion that of Jagat Narain v. King-Emperor (1910) 7 A.L.J. 1161 It is not enough for the District Magistrate to record his opinion that, unless these persons are bound over to keep the peace, there is likely to be a breach of the peace or disturbance of the public tranquility. He has to find in respect of each and all of these persons that they are likely to commit a breach of the peace or disturb the public tranquility, or that they are likely to do some wrongful act which may occasion such a disturbance.