RAMNATH RAI Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition for the revision of the judgment of a Court of Session rejecting an appeal from a Magistrate who had convicted the petitioners, Ramnath Rai and Kalpu Rai, under Section 411, Indian Penal Code, for retaining four bullocks knowing them to have been stolen. No evidence could be adduced of the date when the bullocks or any one of them came into the possession of the petitioners but it was proved that one was the property of a certain person, two others were the property of another person and the fourth was the property of a third. The owners resided in different districts and had reported the bullocks as missing on different dates. The petitioners claimed the bullocks as their own.

(2.) The facts are clear. The petitioners knew that the bullocks had been stolen and were endeavouring to sell them at the mela wh7ere they were apprehended on the 31 May this year. The only point for consideration is the objection by the petitioners that the retention of each bullock was a separate offence and that there should have been a separate trial in respect of each or as an alternative, that under Section 233, Criminal P.C., separate charges should have been preferred and under Section 234 the number of offences with which the accused were charged should have been limited to three only.

(3.) In support of this contention Mr. Manohar Lal cited the decision in Ram Sarup Benia V/s. Emperor (1905) 9 CWN 1027. In that case the three accused were charged with receiving or retaining eight sets of cooking utensils stolen from different persons at different times and on a second count with aiding or abetting each other in retaining such property. It was argued that the first and second counts were illegal. There was no evidence of separate receiving and the Court overruled the contention of the Advocate-General that in the matter of retaining there was only one offence although there may have been separate offences of receiving.