EMPEROR Vs. BAPOO YELLAPA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) We are unable to accept the view taken by the Fourth Presidency Magistrate that the word "residing" or "resident" should be interpolated in Section 110, Criminal Procedure Code, between the words "any person" and "within." It seems to us that the Legislature has advisedly adopted the particular phrase used, to exclude the necessity of proving anything approaching permanent residence and to leave it in the power of the Magistracy to deal with what are perhaps the mostdangerous habitual criminals who wander from place to placeand have no well-known residence where the police or theMagistracy could be sure at any time of finding them.

(2.) We also think that the Presidency Magistrate, not having disbelieved the evidence adduced before him, ought not to have discharged the persons brought before him on the ground that that evidence was insufficient or vague for the purposes of Section 110, Criminal Procedure Code. It is thoroughly established by the evidence, if credible, as the Magistrate appears to have held, that the accused was a notorious ferari : he is on the register of habitual criminals in his own village; on his arrival in Bombay he was observed feeling the pockets of travellers at the railway station. We think it would be difficult to conceive a stronger case of the return to the criminal practices alleged to be habitual in the accused in his own village.

(3.) We are therefore of opinion that this is a case which was within the jurisdiction of the Magistrate and in which he was bound, in view of the evidence unless he disbelieved that evidence, to take action under Chapter VIII of the Criminal Procedure Code.