ALI HYDER Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants have been convicted, in accordance with the majority verdict of the jury upon a series of charges framed under Secs.342 and 376, I.P.C. They have been convicted unanimously in respect of two connected charges, that is to say, two charges based on the same incident under Secs.342 and 376, I.P.C. One of them has also been convicted under Section 377, I.P.C. The case is one of an unusual nature, and is only too clear that it has been mishandled in the Court below by the prosecution, by the defence, and by the learned Judge. The prosecution was so ill-advised as to resist, successfully, a perfectly valid objection to the multiplicity of the charges preferred and investigated in a single proceeding. The defence was so ill-advised as to set up a case which has been completely abandoned in this Court to the extent of a specific disclaimer by the learned advocate appearing for four of the appellants. The charge of the learned Judge is marred by unnecessary rhetoric and inadequate directions on evidence.

(2.) The case which deals with a series of offences said to have been committed between September 1936 a June, 1937, first came before the Courts in the shape of a complaint lodged by one Bindu Goalini on 6 July 1937. Her story then was that some time in September she travelled by train from Sealdah to Belgurriah to stay with her sister. In the compartment she met four of the appellants who proposed to take her to her destination. She left the train with them at Titagarh and was taken to a house where she met the appellant Hyder. There all the appellants ravished her. Later they took her to Hajinagar, where they kept her confined for six weeks while two of them ravished her at intervals. From Hajinagar she was taken back to Titagarh and finally handed over to appellant Aziz who kept her confined for about two months. One Wednesday she escaped and met a woman who took her to the Arya Samaj. She was treated there until she appeared in Court.

(3.) At the commitment stage the story developed, and though it could not be expected that the complaint, covering as it did the occurrences of months, should contain anything like a detailed narrative, some of the additions are substantial. One is that after an abortive attempt to escape on her part, appellant Haider deliberately injured her private parts with a hard substance. Another is that while she was in the house of Ahmed and Aziz they and Haider habitually had intercourse with her against the order of nature. The jury have convicted Aziz only on this charge. Upon these allegations, the appellants were jointly tried on a series of ten charges. Four of these were of wrongful confinement. The first related to the confinement in Titagarh, against all the appellants. The second charged two of them with respect to the detention at Hajinagar. The third again, related to the second detention at Titagarh, and the last to the confinement in the house of Ahmed at Titagarh. The charges of rape were drawn in a peculiar manner, in view of the fact that rape is in law, a single act of sexual intercourse. Each of them specifies an offence of rape, committed either on an indefinite date, or between periods extending from six weeks to six months. The time covered is from September 1936 to June 1937. The charge tinder Section 377, Indian Penal Code, specified an offence committed between the e December, 1936 a June, 1937.