REX Vs. VKRISHNAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The charge against the accused is on two counts, and I desire that you should pay particular attention to the wording of the charge. In substance it relates to two sums of Rs. 4000 each paid into the hands of the accused by Mrs. Appasami on the 20 November 1933, and the 2 March, 1934, respectively in discharge of a mortgage for Rs. 8000 executed by her husband, the late Dewan Bahadur Paul Appasami in 1923 in favour of the Foreign Mission at Pondicherry of which Father Pinel who was examined before you was Procurator at all material times. The particular point to which I wish to draw your attention is that the charge itself is to the effect that by receiving these amounts in his capacity as an attorney or agent of the Mission and by failing to pay the same to Father Pinel the accused had committed criminal breach of trust. You will thus see that the charge says that the non-payment to Father Pinel after entrustment by Mrs. Appaswami constitutes criminal breach of trust. I will lay stress once more on it, because the point is very important. The trust that is alleged by the prosecution or the entrustment was by Mrs. Appaswami with the accused. Father Pinel had nothing to do with it. We are dealing not with a breach of trust as between father Pinel and the accused. If the accused has committed any breach of trust vis a vis Father Pinel, that is to say, of anything entrusted to him by Father Pinel, that is not the subject-matter of the charge, and you should not venture to ex-press an opinion on it; in other words, whether the accused has been guilty of a breach of trust as against Father Pinel is not the subject-matter of the charge. The subject-matter of the charge is that he is guilty of a breach of trust reposed in him by Mrs. Appasami when she paid the two amounts of Rs. 4000 each. That is the entrustment in this case. I am afraid a good deal of your time has been taken up with the question whether there was a duty on the part of the accused to pay this amount to Father Pinel's account or whether he had a right to retain this money under the lien granted by law in favour of attorneys and agents. It is unfortunate that I have to raise a point which does not seem to have been emphasized in the course of the speeches addressed to you but I must do my duty and tell you that the breach of trust charged in this case is breach of the trust reposed by Mrs. Appasami in the accused. So you must remember that the genesis of the trust was the delivery of this money to the accused by Mrs. Appasami.

(2.) I will tell you in formal words what the offence of criminal breach of trust is, but that will come a little later on. To enable you to understand the definition properly, I will put to you an ordinary case. Suppose one of you gives your servant a certain sum of money telling him at the same time : "Go and pay this to the shopkeeper so and so." Here there is entrustment of money by the master to the servant with a direction that he should deal with that money in a particular manner, that is to say, pay it to the particular shopkeeper. If he does not ?do so but pockets the money himself, then there is clear violation of the terms of the contract, which may be either express or implied, which he had entered into at the time of taking charge of the money in regard to the discharge of the trust reposed in him. In other words, the money is entrusted to him for the particular purpose of paying it to a particular person in which case if that has not been done and if the money is utilized by the servant for his own use, then you can say he has acted in violation of the contract, express or implied, entered into regarding the way in which the trust is to be discharged. If, on the other hand, a man comes to you whom you know to be a bill collector of so and so and brings a bill to you and you pay the money to him without saying anything or doing anything but merely take his receipt and pay the money, then if there is no contract at the time, express or implied, that he would actually go and pay it to the principal you have not imposed any trust in him. If you are satisfied, in other words, that the payment by you to the bill collector is payment to the principal and is binding on him, and you really do not care what he does with it, because you have paid it to the person authorized to receive payment and you have no more concern with it, and if in the circumstances it cannot be reasonably implied that there was any contract between the person making the payment and the bill collector, then there is no trust nor any question of any contract, express or implied, regarding the way in which the trust is to be discharged.

(3.) With these two concrete cases of a simple nature before you, you will probably be able to understand clearly what I am going to say in a somewhat more formal way as to what the offence of criminal breach of trust is. The words of the Section which define the offence of criminal breach of trust have been read to you and it is unnecessary for me to reproduce the exact words, but hardly any of the words can be left out without dodger of giving rise to misunderstanding. For the purpose of this case it is enough for me to tell you that if any person, who is entrusted with property in any manner, dishonestly misappropriates or converts to his own use that property, or dishonestly uses or disposes of that property in violation of any direction of law prescribing the mode in which such trust is to be discharged, or of any legal contract, express or implied, which he has made touching the discharge of such trust he commits criminal breach of trust. You will remember that stress is laid on three important points in the definition of the offence. There must be an entrustment; there must be misappropriation or conversion to one's own use or use in violation of any legal direction or of any legal contract; and thirdly the misappropriation or conversion or disposal must be with a dishonest intention.