JABANULLAH Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case the appellants who are 18 in number were tried along with another accused on various charges which are too numerous to mention. They were convicted by the unanimous verdict of the jury and sentenced to different terms of imprisonment by the Judge. The accused who has not appealed before us was sentenced to pay a fine which has been paid. There are various grounds taken before us on behalf of the appellants, but it is necessary to refer to a few of them in order to show that the trial has not been conducted in the way in which it should have been. The first is with regard be the changes framed against the accused. There were 11 charges framed in this case and each accused was charged with not less than eight of the offences covered by some of the charges. The charges were under Secs.304, 147, 148, 323, 324, 304/149, 304/109, 323/109, 324/109, 304/114 and 147/114. This impressive array of charges is enough to confuse any jury.

(2.) The case for the prosecution was that the accused in a body attacked the party of the deceased who were said to have been in possession of the land in dispute, and in the course of the riot accused 1 struck a blow on the head of the deceased which ultimately proved fatal. The case as made out by the evidence was a simple one and it was not necessary to charge the accused with so many offences some of which it is difficult to distinguish from some others. We have on several occasions condemned the practice of having a long series of charges in a case triable by jury as it is likely to confuse them. In the present cage the learned Judge has devoted eight pages of his charge to the explanation of the several sections of the Indian Penal Code. Now to refer to some of those charges, the accused have been charged under Section 304/109 and they hive also been charged under Section 304/114. There is not enough explanation of the fine distinction between Secs.109 and 114 with the result that the jury have convicted one of the appellants accused 2 under Section 147/114. The case against that accused is that he is the landlord of the deceased and he took men with him to the place of occurrence and gave order to beat the deceased and his party. On these facts he could either be convicted under Section 147/109 or under Section 147 being member of an unlawful assembly. This indicates that the jury were not able very well to appreciate the law as propounded by the Judge.

(3.) Then there is the more serious defect in the charge which it is difficult for us to overlook. The defence argued that if the jury believed that the deceased was dispossessed the day previous to the occurrence and the accused reaped the paddy on the field and stacked, it and on the day of occurrence the deceased with a number of men came to snatch the paddy away, the accused had the right of private defence to resist force by force, and the offence they would have committed would be one of trespass but not of rioting. The learned Judge in his charge mentioned this argument on behalf of the defence and then it appears he referred to some decisions of the High Court which are not before us and which we cannot say are how far applicable to the facts of this particular case. He given no farther directions on the question raised by the defence. It is the duty of the Judge to tell the jury how to apply the law to the facts found by them. In a case like this he would be wanting in the proper discharge of his duty to the jury if he places the proper facts to the jury without telling them how they should decide the guilt or otherwise of the accused on the law. In the case off Meher Sardar v. Emperor [1912] 16 C.W.N. 46 the practice of referring to reported decisions has been condemned. It is not necessary for me to go so far as to say that there is any bar to the Judge is explaining the charge to the jury what particular view was taken by the highest Court of the land, but ho must tell that jury how to apply the law laid down by the decisions of this Court to the facts of the particular case. The learned Judge in the case before us has not helped the jury to apply the law if they found that as a matter of fact the deceased was dispossessed the day previous to the date of occurrence. This seems to me to be a very serious matter because we do not know what view of the facts the jury took, it may be that they believed that the deceased was all along in possession in spite of the rent decree. It may be that they believed that the landlord who had obtained this decree against the deceased, by getting symbolical possession through the civil Court had succeeded in dislodging the deceased from the land previous to the occurrence or some day previous to it, but still as the accused in a body attacked the deceased and committed murder, they should be convicted of the offences with which they were charged.