MAHABIR GOPE Vs. SAMRATHI SINGH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This application is presented on behalf of nine persons who have been ordered each to execute a bond in Rs. 500 with one surety in Rs. 600 under Section 107, Criminal P.C., to keep the peace for one year. An appeal to the Sessions Judge against this order was dismissed. The facts found are that one Samrathi Singh has taken raiyati settlement of a large block of land in village Chorgaon and is in possession as found by both Courts; but the petitioners who are goalas of the village object to his possession and have repeatedly interfered putting up frivolous claims of their own possession over portions of Samrathi's raiyati lands. It was said by Samrathi in his petition to the Magistrate that he apprehended violence at the hands of the accused in order to dispossess him from his lands and the Court substantially accepting his allegations has bound down the accused persons.

(2.) Two points are taken in revision. The first is that the trial Court has admitted as evidence of the past conduct of accused and their disposition to use violence sanehas or reports made by several of the prosecution witnesses on various dates in the absence of the accused. It was said that these should not have been used in evidence against the accused and were in no way binding on them. It is no doubt correct to say that these sanehas are not substantive evidence of the matters mentioned in them, but in every case the person who made the report has been examined to testify to the fact reported by him and Section 157, Evidence Act, is authority for the use of the reports in order to corroborate what the witnesses have testified to in Court. I do not therefore find that there is substance in this objection, though the Court below would do well to use careful expression so as not to let it appear as if such reports had been treated as substantive evidence or as more than corroboration under Section 157 of facts deposed to.

(3.) The next point was that to support an order for security it was incumbent on the Crown to show not only that there was a likelihood of a breach of the peace at some past time, but that this likelihood continued to the present date. In support of this, reference is made of cases in the Bombay and Allahabad High Courts which were followed in this Court in Mirza Zulfakar Beg V/s. Emperor AIR (1927) Pat 281. All those cases referred to apprehensions of a breach of the peace arising out of religious differences between Hindu and Mahomedan communities. The decisions seem to have proceeded on their own facts and as pointed out by Das J. in the Fatna case, no hard and fast rule can be laid down in cases of this nature. It often happens that religious enthusiasm though acute at a particular moment sub-aides and no danger of breach of the peace remains; but the present is hot an instance of a religious dispute but of claims to immovable property and there is no indication that the party of the accused are likely to abandon their claims or to give up the intention of using violence in support of them.