EMPEROR Vs. AMIMIYA IMAMMIYA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by a head constable and six police constables against the convictions and sentences varying from three months rigorous imprisonment in the case of accused No. 4 to three years rigorous imprisonment in the case of accused Nos. 2, 7 and 8, to transportation for life in the case of accused Nos. 1, 3 and 5, In all the cases other concurrent sentences were passed on the accused by Mr. C.S. Deodhar, Sessions Judge of Kaira, on January 6, this year. Accused No. 6 died in the course of the proceedings.

(2.) The accused are not all similarly charged, the charges against them variously include rioting, unlawful assembly, causing hurt and murder, and the bare uncontrovertible facts from which these various charges spring are as follows. At about 7-20 p.m. on the evening of August 18, 1942, as the result of a collision, fortuitous in its actual occurrence, an armed force consisting of one Head Constable (accused No. 1) in command and seven other Constables (accused Nos. 2 and 8), five being armed with rifles and three with lathis, who were proceeding from Navli to Vasad by train, got down from the train at the intervening station of Adas on sighting, and then encountered, a party of 34 students, who had come from Baroda State earlier on that day and who were then in the proximity of the station; beat, them with lathis and opened fire, firing seven rounds of ball ammunition, which resulted in the death of four members of the party from Baroda and the wounding of ten others. I must at the ouset, in fairness to the accused, dispel certain prejudice which was allowed to creep into the case in the lower Court. The party from Baroda has been throughout the proceedings described as "boys" and sometimes as "satyagrahis" (those who offer "passive resistance" only). There is no evidence whether all or any of the members of the party were "sataygrahis" but their ages ranged from 18 to 23, the majority of them being 18 or 19 years of age. Eighteen years of age is, in this country, not only the age of the attainment of majority, but it is also the age, as it is in many other countries, for joining the army for military service. Throughout this judgment in referring collectively to these 34 young men I shall use the colourless expression "the party from Baroda."

(3.) The prosecution's case, as developed in this Court by the Advocate General, is that the Police, when they got off the train at Adas station, did not do so in the performance of any duty, but in order to carry out the premeditated design of giving the party from Baroda "khokhra" (the nearest English words are "a hammering" or "abashing") and so, speaking sarcastically, "to give them swaraj (their freedom)." That there was no idea of pursuing an investigation, no idea of dispersing an unlawful assembly, no idea of apprehending any of the party from Baroda or of preventing any criminal act, no element of acting either in self defence or of protecting property, and that accordingly this is a case of wanton and unprovoked murder, deliberate in design and brutal in its execution, inspired by a thirst to revenge the murder of two policemen which had taken place 5 days previously at Dakore.