PERIYA GOUNDAN Vs. KUPPA GOUNDAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Appellant sued respondent for damages for malicious prosecution. He got a decree for Rs. 100 in the Munsif s Court. The District Judge set it aside on the ground that the respondent could not be said to have prosecuted appellant, because he only made a report to the village Munsif as a result of which the police after investigation launched and conducted a prosecution for theft against appellant and his father. The authority relied on is the ruling of this Court in Narasinga Rao v. Muthaya Pillai (1902) I.L.R. 26 Mad. 362

(2.) Any person desirous of setting the Criminal Law in motion against another in respect of an act amounting to a cognizable offence can do so in three ways: 1. He can present a complaint to a Magistrate having Jurisdiction, who will thereupon take action under Chapter XVII of the Criminal Procedure Code. 2. He may give an information to an officer in charge of a Police Station, who will take action under Chapter XIV of the Criminal Procedure Code.

(3.) He may (in the cases of all non-bailable and certain other offences) give information to the Headman of his village, who is bound under Section 45 of the Cr.P. Code to forthwith communicate the information to the nearest Magistrate, and to the officer in charge of the nearest Police Station. It then becomes the duty of the Police Officer to investigate the case as laid down in Chapter XIV. 3. Method (3) in fact only differs from method (2) in that the village Headman, being the officer presumably most accessible to the person giving information, is made the channel of communication to the Police officer. It was the method adopted in the present case; and, as the District Judge himself reccgnized the fact that this indirect method of communicating with the Police was resorted to makes no difference to the defendant s liability for damages. The contention is that whenever the prosecution in Court is instituted on a Police report under Section 173 of the Cr.P. Code, the person who furnished the original information to the Police, whether directly or through the village Headman, is not responsible for the act of the Police and cannot be sued for damages for malicious prosecution.