SAILABALA DASI Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case, the appellant was charged with and convicted of concealment of birth under Section 318, I.P.C., and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for nine months and a fine of Rs. 300 or, in default, three months rigorous imprisonment. She was tried with two other accused who were acquitted. The first accused Usha Bala was the daughter of the second accused Sailabala and the third accused Birendra was the grandson of the second accused Sailabala. On 4 July 1934 Ushabala gave birth to male twins in the Calcutta Medical School and, Hospital. Apparently a nurse of the Hospital knew some women who desired to adopt a newly born child and on 8 July she took all three accused with the twins to 69/3, Corporation Street, in a car. The nurse got out of the car and took the twins into these premises to show them to the women, who she hoped, might adopt them. While she was inside, all the accused went off in the car.

(2.) For various reasons the women were not willing to adopt the twins. The nurse came out and, finding that the accused had disappeared, went back to the Hospital and from information given by another patient, traced the accused. Eventually the twins were given back to Sailabala, Sailabala went off with the twins, saying that she was going to the Talla Bridge at Shambazar, and she asked the women to tell her grandson that she had gone there. That was the last that was seen of the twins.

(3.) When Sailbala was examined under Section 342, Criminal P.C., it is alleged that she said in the vernacular "What has happened has happened." The Magistrate interpreted this as a plea of guilty. We enquired from him whether he had recorded the exact words in the vernacular which this woman used, and in his answer he says that he never keeps any note of the exact words in the vernacular used by accused persons, and it is impossible for him to remember them, but that the accused pleaded guilty, and that the pleader asked for mercy. In cases where an accused person makes some statement during the course of the trial which is interpreted as a plea of guilty, the Court should record the exact words used, especially is this the case, when a statement is made in answer to questions put by the Court under Section 342, Criminal P.C.