AHMED ALI SHEIK Vs. SABED SARDAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This rule was issued to show cause why certain proceedings under Section 145, Criminal P.C. should not be quashed. The main ground which has been urged before us is that inasmuch as the police report disclosed the fact that the first party was in possession of the land, and that the second party were aggressors and were trying to disturb his possession, the learned Magistrate had no jurisdiction to make an order under Section 145, and that the proper course for him to adopt was to issue an injunction under Section 144, Criminal P.C., or to bind down the second party under Section 107, Criminal P.C. We have been referred to some decided cases in support of this contention and amongst them to a recent decision of our own in W. Stewart V/s. Hubert Hughes . The facts of that case are distinguishable from the present as the police report itself plainly showed that there was and had been for some time no immediate apprehension of a breach of the peace but only a possibility of such breach at some future date.

(2.) The real question here is whether the materials contained in the police report were sufficient to justify the order drawing up the proceedings, and whether taken as a whole they gave rise to an apprehension that a breach of the peace might occur. On behalf of the petitioner stress has been laid upon that portion of the report which states that the second party did not claim the land, and upon a later passage stating that in the opinion of the Sub- Inspector the first party was in possession and that Sabed Sardar, a member of the second party, was the engineer of all the golmals, that he had no land in the disputed plot but hoped to get some land through Kuram Khan by creating possession by force.

(3.) Now in the first place, it is to be observed that while the trend of the decisions is that it is the imminence of a breach of the peace as disclosed in the police report which creates jurisdiction, it cannot in my opinion be held that the Magistrate is "cabined, cribbed and confined" so to speak, within the four corners of the report. It is his duty jupon all the material before him to decide whether proceedings under Section 145, are necessary or not. The words in the section are: is satisfied from a police report or other information that a dispute likely to cause a breach of the peace exists concerning any land etc.