SYED ABDUL JALIL Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants have all been convicted of an offence punishable under Section 302 read with Section 120-B, Indian Penal Code, for conspiring to murder one Saharulla Bepari. In the Sessions Court a further charge was added to the effect that they also conspired to commit an offence punishable under Section 201 of the Code. This of course is quite meaningless. If the body was in fact concealed, this was done in order to cover up the tracka of the suecessful conspirators. However, the learned Deputy Legal Remembrancer did not attempt to support this second conspiracy finding and it is not necessary for us to say anything more about it. It appears that Saharulla was a litigious and unpopular money-lender with several enemies. On 8 January last he went to Kurigram where he had a case in one of the Civil Courts. He asked the appellant Tangura to meet him at the station in the evening and to escort him home. He returned by the evening train accompanied by a doctor Gafur Ali Sarkar and he left the station in company with prosecution witness 1, Pachaulla and the appellant Tangura. He has not been seen since. We accept the evidence of identification of the corpse which was eventually discovered and there is no, doubt that he was murdered. The question for our determination now is whether id has been proved that the appellants conspired to murder him.

(2.) The case, as committed by the learned Magistrate to the Court of Session, was extremely weak. In my opinion, it could not be put higher than one of vague suspicion and it was not really worth committing at all. The reason for this is that the prosecution had met with a serious disappointment. They hoped to get the evidence of Pachaulla who was one of the accused. But when he was tendered a pardon, he refused to accept it. When the case came on for trial in the Court of Session an extraordinary thing happened. When Pachaulla was asked to plead, he stated that he was not guilty but that he would be glad to tell the truth. He was then tendered a pardon by the learned Judge and was examined by the prosecution as their first witness. It is mainly upon the evidence of this man that the present convictions are based.

(3.) Put shortly his evidence is to the following effect: He was able to state that Saharulla was dead, because according to him, he was an actual eye-witness of the murder. He states that he and Tangura met the deceased at Tista Station and then accompanied him home. They followed the railway line for some time and then took a path leading across some low lying land. Before they reached home, the other appellants and some other men, who were lying in wait in a bamboo clump, came out and murdered the deceased. He was able to recognize them by their voices. The appellant Dhara Baiyo gave the deceased a cigarette and struck a match in order to light it. Then when the deceased put down his head in order to light the cigarette, a man called Bhulla struck him twice with a big knife on the neck. The witness then fled in terror; but he managed to see the dead body being dragged away. Just before dawn all the appellants came to his house and told him that he was not to say anything about what he had seen.