SAH MAUJI RAM Vs. SAH CHATURBHUJ

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a consolidated appeal from a judgment of the High Court of Allahabad, dated 3rd December 1935, embodied in two decrees of the same date, by which two decrees of the Court of the Subordinate Judge of Mainpuri, dated 1 August 1931, were set aside and the respondent was granted damages amounting to Rs. 5313 and Rs. 5300 respectively in respect of malicious prosecutions by the appellant. The appellant seeks the restoration of the decrees of the Subordinate Judge, who had dismissed the suits. The consolidated suits were both filed by the respondent on 16 December 1930, claiming damages for malicious prosecution : (1) in Suit No. 41 of 1930, in respect of proceedings instituted in April 1929, under S. 107, Criminal PC., on the complaint of the appellant, against the respondent and others, in the Court of the First Class Magistrate at Mainpuri, and (2) in Suit No. 42 of 1930, in respect of the prosecution under S. 506, I. PC., instituted in May 1929, on the complaint of the appellant against the respondent and others in the same Court.

(2.) At the hearing before the Board, the appellant did not dispute his responsibility for the institution of both prosecutions, though the police were already making enquiries as to the state of enmity between the parties before the appellant made his complaint under S. 107. Further it is the fact that both the prosecutions ultimately failed. The Magistrate decided both cases on 21 October 1929 ; in the case under S. 107 he ordered the respondent to furnish securities to keep the peace for one year, and in the case under S. 506 he convicted all the accused and ordered them to pay fines. But on an appeal by the respondent in both cases, the Sessions Judge, on 18 December 1929, allowed the appeals, and set aside the conviction and sentence.

(3.) The respondent, in order to succeed in his suits, has still to establish that the appellant acted without reasonable and probable cause and maliciously ; in this he failed before the Subordinate Judge, but succeeded before the High Court, which set aside the conclusions of the learned Judge on the evidence, and, on a review of the evidence, came to a contrary conclusion. Their Lordships may state at once that they are not satisfied with the reasons given by the High Court for making jettison of the findings of the Subordinate Judge, and examining the evidence themselves, and deciding questions of the credibility of witnesses whom they had not seen, in a case where the bearing of the witnesses, and particularly that of the parties, is obviously of importance.