GOVERNMENT OF BOMBAY Vs. DASHRATH RAMNIVAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by the Government of the Province of Bombay against an order of acquittal and discharge passed by Sen J. in a Sessions trial agreeing with the majority verdict of not guilty by the jury. The charge against the accused was that he committed the murder of a Police Constable, Yeshwant Bhikaji, on February 5, 1943, at about 10 p.m. by stabbing him with a knife on Lakshmi Napoo Road at Matunga in Bombay. The prosecution relied upon the evidence of two alleged eye-witnesses, one person having seen the accused running away with a knife in his hand soon after the offence was alleged to have been committed, the accused having washed his blood-stained hands on the same night in the room of witness Ambikabai and having concealed the knife in the compound of the Cutchi Visha Hall situated in Laxmi Narayan Lane which the accused was alleged to have entered after committing the offence. The prosecution also relied upon a statement of an incriminating nature made by the accused before the Coroner on March 19, 1943, when he held inquest proceedings over the body of the deceased.

(2.) The defence was that the accused had] not committed the alleged offence, that the eye- witnesses were on inimical terms with him and were telling a false story as they were members of a gambling den and a ganja club which were carried on in the hut of one Mulji, that Ambikabai was induced by the Police to make an incriminating statement against the accused under a promise that her husband, who was in Police custody, would be released if she made the statement, that he had not concealed any knife in the compound of the Cutchi Visha Hall;, that the accused was taken before the Chief Presidency Magistrate on February 27 and 28, 1943, but he had not made any statement before the learned Magistrate, and that the accused was harassed and tortured by the Criminal Investigation Department Police to make the alleged incriminating statement before the Coroner.

(3.) In his charge to the jury the learned Judge dwelt upon the alleged confession made by the accused before the Coroner, and it is important to consider that question first because Mr. Daphtary on behalf of the prosecution principally relies upon what the learned Judge told the jury on that part of the case in asking us to hold that there was a misdirection. The Coroner was examined in the lower Court and he said that when the suspect was before him no Police- officer had suggested to him that he would make any statement, but the accused volunteered to make it and the accused further said that he wished his statement to be recorded as the statements of witnesses had been recorded, and after taking care to see that there were no policemen in his room including those in mufti, he asked the suspect to make any statement that he wished to make, but after warning him that any statement that he would make might be used against him at the trial. The accused insisted, however, that the Coroner should take down his statement. Thereupon the statement was taken down and the Coroner has recorded the questions and answers. At the end of the statement the Coroner added a certificate that the suspect had made the above statement voluntarily after the Court was cleared of all Police constables and police-officers. After the evidence of the Coroner was over, the learned Counsel for the accused objected to the alleged confession going in on the ground that the accused was in police custody for a long time, and there was possibility of the policemen remaining inside the Court in mufti, and making signs to the accused from outside. The learned Judge, however, held that it did not appear to him that the statement of the accused was caused by any inducement, threat or promise sufficient to give the accused ground for supposing that by making it he would gain any advantage or avoid any evil, and being of that opinion he admitted the statement in evidence.