MOHAMMAD NAZIR Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) One Mohammad Nazir was, on 9 October 1927, sentenced to six months imprisonment under Secs.500 and 502, I.P.C., such sentences to run concurrently, and ordered to pay a fine of Rs. 100 under each section. He appealed to the Sessions Judge, who dismissed his appeal, and he applied in revision here. During the hearing of the revision it became obvious that the sentence of six months imprisonment might reasonably be considered inadequate, and further that neither Courts had considered the circumstances of aggravation by which Mohammad Nazir had enhanced the seriousness of his original offence. A notice to show cause why sentence should not be enhanced was addressed to Mohammad Nazir, and he has appeared to-day represented by Mr. Mahommad Husain. This is the third case in the last few months which has come before this Bench in which the character of an innocent and harmless person has been rocklessly and grievously assailed. One of these cases was that of Emperor v. Jhabba Mal . This, like the case just mentioned, is also a matter of considerable importance to the public, the press and to the profession.

(2.) On 28 May there was a jalsa in connexion with the opening ceremony of the Islamia School at Mawana. One Moulvi Shabbir Ahmad Usmani was to deliver lectures on 30 and 31 May. In the town of Mawana, in the Meerut District, there was residing a highly respected gentleman by name Har Swaroop, and he had a son by name Daya Swaroop. That boy was about 17 years old. His father was president of the Mawana Arya Samaj, treasurer of another religious society, and the son, Daya Swaroop himself, was secretary of the Arya Kumar Sabha and was also the president of the Arya Bal Sabha. On 28 and 29 May this young man Daya Swaroop went to the jalsa but fell ill on the night of 29 May. From that evening until his death he was unable and did not in fact leave the house. He was attended by three doctors, Pandit Raghunath Sahai of Mawana, Dr. Raghunandan Prasad of Mawana and Dr. Prabhoo Nath Banerji of Meerut. He was said to be suffering from typhoid, and he died at about 5 a.m., on the morning of 10 June 1927. Some 200 to 225 people joined in his funeral procession, which started at about 8 in the morning and which went by the ordinary route passing the thana to the ordinary cremation ground. The cremation was carried out according to Vedic rituals with ghee, sandalwood, campor and fuel. Certain Hindi and Urdu papers recorded the death of this young man of seventeen in appropriate and sympathetic language, and there the matter rested. The position was that a respected citizen of Mawana had lost a young boy of seventeen years of age who was himself well-known and respected in Mawana and an ardent believer and follower of the Hindu religion. On 24 June 1927, Mohammad Nazir, a Mohammedan, published in a Meerut paper, the "Risalat," an article about which it is difficult to speak with restraint. The article, to be appreciated must be set out in full. It was in the following terms: Was a Hindu boy killed when he expressed his intention of embracing Islam? It has been heard and there is a strong rumour that at the opening ceremony of a school for Mohamedan boys in tahsil Mawana, District Meerut, which function was attended by the Ulmas of Delhi, Deoband and Meerut and at which were present prominent Christians, Hindus and Arya Samajists who had come to hear the speech of Shabair Ahmad Usmani, there was a boy, son of Lala Har Swaroop, Honorary Magistrate, Rais and zemindar of Mawana Kalan, who was also listening to the speech. On hearing the speech the truth in Islam was fully impressed upon the mind of the boy. He expressed to his relatives and parents his intention of embracing Islam. Thereupon all his relatives became angry and showed to him in all possible ways that Islam was a false and Hinduism a true religion. The boy said: "On the occasion (of a face to face discussion) you and your advocates slip away and when the other side is absent you praise your religion. I am determined to embrace Islam and will not listen to anyone." When the boy said like that, a watch began to be kept on him. When, in spite of the watch, his idea remained the same, something was administered to him and his dead body was, for fear of the police, taken, not to the cremation ground, but to a lonely place, and was burnt there, and tins of ghee were used instead of wood. When the people began to talk of the affair and the police made an investigation, true facts were concealed, proof of sudden death was furnished through a doctor who was a tenant living close by and another doctor and on their testimony the matter was hushed up. In Mowana-Kalan, and the neighbouring villages as well as in Meerut the affair is known like that. It is not known why the police hushed up the matter; they did so probably because no other proof was available.

(3.) The summary, which we have given above, as to the illness and death of this young man was proved in Court as conclusively as it could be, and it is now necessary to compare what were the undoubted facts with the abominable article published by the Risalat. The article opens thus: "Was a Hindu boy killed when he expressed his intention of embracing Islam"? The answer to that question was "No," and that answer could have been found out most readily by Mohammad Nazir if he had taken the trouble to institute the slightest enquiries in good faith. The least enquiries would have demonstrated that the boy had been ill for ten or eleven days, had never heard the speech of Moulvi Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, that three well-known local doctors had been in attendance with him, that the boy died about 5 a.m., that the funeral procession started at the usual time and passed along the customary route, that the cremation had taken place on the customary spot, and that there was no doubt whatever that the boy had died from typhoid and that the police had never in the slightest degree interested themselves in the cause of death, and further that there never was any inclination on the part of this young man to embrace Islam.