VIRJI BHAGWAN Vs. BAI AMBA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an application for revision of the judgment of the Chief Presidency Magistrate, convicting the petitioners of the offence of defamation. The complainant in the case is a woman belonging to the same caste as the petitioners. At a meeting of the caste an accusation was brought and a sentence of ex-communication pronounced against her. The complainant prosecuted the petitioners for defamation, alleging that the accusation against her was false that the sentence had been passed behind her back and that the slander had been published by the petitioners without any justification or good faith.

(2.) The learned Magistrate has found upon the evidence that the sentence of ex- communication was communicated to the members of the caste only; but he holds that the petitioners cannot claim privilege and bring their act within any of the exceptions to Section 499 of the Indian Penal Code, because the meeting of the caste at which the accusation against the woman was considered and at which the sentence of ex-communication was passed had been called for a totally different purpose and the woman was condemned unheard.

(3.) It is urged for the petitioners, by their counsel Mr. Bhulabhai Desai, that there is no evidence whatever to support the learned Magistrate's finding that the petitioners published to the caste the sentence of ex-communication after it had been pronounced at the caste meeting. What appears upon the oral evidence recorded is that as a rule every resolution of the caste passed at any of its meetings is communicated to its members by a servant duly appointed for the purpose. That was done in the present case. The petitioners must be presumed to have known when the sentence was passed that in the usual course of business the servant would publish it; and that the sentence was pronounced for such publication. Having regard to these surrounding circumstances the Magistrate was right in holding that the publication to the caste was made by the servant with the knowledge and consent of the petitioners.