MAGAN LAL Vs. GANESH PRASAD

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an application presented to this Court under Section 526 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. I am asked that the case of Magan Lal v. Ganesh Prasad now pending in the Court of Raja Partab Bahadur, Honorary Magistrate, first class, Allahabad, be either directed to be committed for trial to the Court of Session, or transferred for trial to some other competent Magistrate. From the affidavit filed in connection with this application it appears that Magan Lal was tried in the Court of the Joint Magistrate of Allahabad on the complaint of Ganesh Prasad charging Magan Lal with offences under Sections 409 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code. Magan Lal was acquitted after trial by the Joint Magistrate. He then obtained sanction from the Joint Magistrate s Court to prosecute Ganesh Prasad for having falsely charged him with offences under Sections 409 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code. The case was transferred by the Joint Magistrate of Allahabad to the Court of Raja Partab Bahadur, Honorary Magistrate, first class, Allahabad, and came to his Court on the 21st of August 1917. It has been, therefore, pending for about four months and is still incomplete. The ground urged for transfer or for the order prayed for is inter alia that the learned Honorary Magistrate does not know the English language and the applicant deponent is put to trouble and expense in being made to file translations from English judgments into Urdu, and that there have been already several unnecessary adjournments due to the fact that the learned Magistrate begins his sittings between 3 and 4 P.M. A further contention is raised in the affidavit that the Honorary Magistrate has kept the case for trial in his Court, although he has no jurisdiction to try it. I have examined the statement made by the complainant Ganesh Prasad when he first made his complaint. There is no doubt that he did charge Magan Lal with offences under Sections 409 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code. It is alleged that that complaint was a false one. If so, it was a false complaint of these specific offences, and was, therefore, a false complaint falling within the second paragraph of Section 211 of the Indian Penal Code. Criminal proceedings were instituted upon a complaint of an offence punishable with transportation for life or imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years. If the complaint was a false one, of course it is clearly to be understood that I commit myself to no opinion of any kind as to whether the charge was true or false, the charge and the criminal proceedings ensuing therefrom were of a very serious nature It is a case which ought to ba tried either by a Court of Session or at, any rate by a Magistrate of considerable experience, and it is not a case of the kind that should have been sent for trial to an Honorary Magistrate who does not appear to have had much experience in the trial of criminal cases. I say this because on looking to the order-sheet I find adjournments and cross-examinations allowed which are never intended by law and which should never be granted by any Magistrate of experience. I find that the complainant was cross-examined on four different occasions, and this is a mere sample of the kind of procedure which received the sanction of the Honorary Magistrate. The mere fact that the enquiry or so-called trial has lasted for nearly four months calls for the case being removed from the Court of the Honorary Magistrate and tried by some one of experience in these matters. I understand that all the evidence for the prosecution has been taken, and I direct that the case be now committed for trial to the Court of Session on the charge of instituting or causing to be instituted a false charge of offences under Sections 409 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code and, therefore falling within the second Clause of Section 211 of the Indian Penal Code, a case which is triable by a Court of Session. Let the record be returned.