RAMESHWAR Vs. GOBIND PRASAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a revision filed at the instance of the complainant asking this Court to set aside an order of acquittal passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge of Cawnpore and to restore the order of the learned Magistrate convicting the opposite parties.

(2.) It appears that the complainant's masters were wholesale merchants of cloth and the opposite parties were retail traders. The opposite parties owed money to the complainant's firm. The complainant's masters gave the opposite parties 24 hours time to pay up. This time was grantee by means of a telegram, although the parties were residing at the same place, viz., Cawnpore. The object of sending a telegram was evidently to show the urgency of the matter. The prosecution case is that the opposite parties approached the creditor firm and induced thorn to grant 15 days time to pay up. It is further said that the object was that within the time granted, the opposite parties would remove their goods from their shop and would thereby escape the payment of just dues of the creditors. This object was carried out. The telegram was sent on the 19 of May, 1924, and the Civil Courts closed for the usual vacation on the 1 of June, 1924. It is clear that on the closing of the Civil Courts it was not open to the creditors to seek any remedy in the Civil Court. The creditors went to the Criminal Court and brought a charge of cheating against the opposite parties. The learned Magistrate who heard the ease, was of opinion that cheating had been committed and he, convicting the opposite parties, sentenced them. An appeal was taken to the learned Additional Sessions Judge. He found that, to quote his own words. All that the prosecution evidence shows is that the appellants fraudulently induced the complainants to give them some time, but the fraud, it seems, was inchoate and inconsequential.

(3.) The learned Sessions Judge remarks that there was no guarantee that the Civil Court, at the instance of the creditors, would have granted an order for attachment before judgment. But the question is not what the Civil Court would have granted or not granted. The main question is whether the creditors could have moved the Court to grant their prayer or not, if the time of 15 days had not been obtained. On the finding of the learned Sessions Judge that the time was obtained fraudulently, a conviction ought to have followed.