TAHER KHAN Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The four appellants were tried before the Sessions Judge of Faridpur sitting with two Assessors on a charge framed under Section 366, Indian Penal Code. The Assessors were for acquitting the appellants. The learned Sessions Judge has convicted them and sentenced them each to rigorous imprisonment for two years.

(2.) The actual facts are simple enough. The abducted woman Wazidunnessa had been living with her husband at Dhubri. On her husband s death she returned, as a widow to live with her mother Abdunnessa at Paibandi in the Faridpur district. While there she received a proposal of marriage from one Daliladdi. The proposal was distasteful to her--Daliladdi being an old man with wife and children, and she, therefore, refused. She and her mother, however, came to the conclusion that it was desirable that she should marry a man who would reside with them and also maintain the mother. She accordingly, on the 18th April last, entered into a marriage in nika form with one Piziraddin. On the following day the four appellants with Daliladdi came to her house and took her away by force to the house of the appellant Mobarak Ali. There is evidence that while she was at that house, she received another proposal of marriage from Daliladdi.

(3.) The abduction took place in broad daylight and does not seem to have been accompanied with much force or violence; but there is no reason to suppose that the woman Wazidnnnessawent with the appellants willingly. Both the learned Sessions Judge and the Assessors appear to have been agreed as to the facts proved in their main outline. The Assessors, however, felt some difficulty in finding that the intention charged, namely, that the woman should be compelled to marry Daliladdi against her will, had been sufficiently establishedby the evidence. We have been taken through the depositions of the witnesse; and, having considered those depositions, we are satisfied that the learned Sessions Judge was right in the conclusion that the accused abducted the woman with the criminal intent necessary to an offence under Section 366, Indian Penal Code.