SAIYID ALAY AHMAD Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a remarkable case and whether I am right or wrong in the view which I take on the merits nobody can doubt that the result o? the original trial was in the highest degree unsatisfactory.

(2.) The charge against the accused is that he, as Pleader, having had certain drafts contained in an envelope entrusted to him, either for safe custody, or to have fair copies of them prepared on some subsequent date, which drafts represented a compromise which had been arrived at in an unfortunate and protracted dispute between a brother and his sister, in a subsequent civil suit which the brother brought against his sister upon an allegation which the Subordinate Judge, who tried it, found to be wholly false, being called as a witness, swore that the document shown to him and known as Exhibit 4 in that civil suit was one of the documents which bad been entrusted to him. It was not that fact, I think, is one of the few facts, which has been clearly established in the criminal enquiry.

(3.) The question to be decided in this criminal enquiry is whether he knew that it was not, and falsely and wilfully swore that it was when he knew that it was not. The answer to that question depends upon whether it is proved that he knew the contents of the documents handed over to him. The contents and appearances of the false and true documents were very similar. Of course, he might have known; that goes without saying. His guilt or innocence, however, cannot depend upon speculation. Further, if portions of the prosecution evidence are believed and portions are disbelieved he did know. But the guilt of accused persons cannot depend on vacillating and contradictory statements of witnesses, who either contradict themselves or are contradicted by persons called to support them.