Radhakishan v. State of U. P.

Judgment

CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Criminal Appeals Nos. 160 to 162of1960. Appeals by special leave from the judgment and qrder dated January 20, 1960 of the Allahabad High Court in Criminal Government Appeals Nos. 20ll to 2013 of 1958. B. 0. 2Uisra and P. K. Ohakravarti, for the appellant. G. 0 .. Mathur and 0. P. Lal, for the respondtJnt. 1962. September 27. The Judgment of the Court was delivered by MuDHOLKAR, .J.-Thcsc three appeals arise out Mudholkar, J. of three separate trials before the Additional Sessions Judge, Bulandshahr, but were argued together as they arise identical questions. In all these trials, the appellant, who was a postman attached to the Bulandshahr post office was tried for offences under s. 52 of the Indian Post Office Act, 1898 (VI of lSDS) and in two of them, also for offences under ss. 4() 7 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code.

Briefly stated the allegations against the appellant were that he either stole or secreted five registered letters and tlJat he fabricated three receipts showing that the registered letters were received by the addressees. The learned Additional Sessions Judge acquitted the appellant of all these offences. The State then preferred an appeal against his acquittal in these three cases to the High Court of Allahabad but restricted the 1ppcal to tl1e acquittal of the appellant in respect of offences under Radhakishan State of U. P. Mudholkar, J. s. 52 of the Indian Post Office Act, 1898 (hereafter referred to as the Act). The High Court held that the appellant had secreted the five registered letters in question and on this finding set aside his acquittal and convicted him in each of the three appeals for offences under s. 52 of the Act and sentenced him to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of one year in each case. The appellant has come up to this Court by special leave.

Briefly stated the proseculion case is that when the house in which the appellant lives along with his father Diwan Singh, a retired Police Head Constable, was searched by the C.I.D. Inspector, S.N. Singh, along with Masood Murtaza, Sub-Inspector of Police, Bulandshahr on May l:l, 1956, in connection with a case against Messrs Greenwood Publicity, they accidentally discovered a large number of letters and postcards and also the five registered letters in question. At the time of the search the appellant who happens to be a trade union official, was not in Bulandshahr but was away on leave at Delhi in connection with a postal conference. These articles were found in an almirah, the key of which was produced by the appellant's father. The articles were not listed at the spot but were taken to the Kotwali in a: scaled packet and later on listed there.

A 1mmber of other articles were also seized at that time but we arc not concerned with them as thcv have no cbnnection with the charges against the appellant. Bricflsy, the appellant's defence in all these cases is that there are two factions in the Bulandshahr post office and that these articles were planted by the opposite party. According to him, the planting must have occurred in the Kotwali when the Sub- Inspector purported to make a list of the articles seized from the house in which the appellant Jives. Further, according to him, neither the house nor the almirah from which the articles arc said to have been 1 S.C.R. seized was in his exclusive possession. He statedand that fact is not denied-that the house which consists of two rooms only has been rented in his father's name, that both of them live in tl1osc two room~ and tl1at the almirah was i11 his fothcr"s possession inasmuch as the key was produec<l by him. On behalf of the appellant lvir. ll. C. Misra has raised the following six points :

(1) That on the findings arrived at by the High Court no offence under s. 52 uf the Post Office A.:t has been made out. (2) That it has not been established that i he five registered letters were in the exclusive possession of the appellant. (3) That the search was illegal inasmuch as it was in contravention of the provisions of ss. 10:1 and 165 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. (4) That in examining the appellant the Additional Sessions Judge did not comply with the requirements of s. 342 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. 15) That the High Court has not found that there were compelling reasons for setting aside the appellant's acquittal. (6) The sentences in thl three cases having been ordered to run consecutively the total sentence is excessive. We w. 1 Jeal with the last four points first. So far as the alicged illegalitv of the search is concerned it is sufficient to say th~t even assuming that the search was illegal the seizure of the articles is not vitiated.

It may be that where the provisions of ss. 103 and 165, Code of Criminal Procedure, are Radhakishan State of U. P. Aludholkar, J BadMJ:isha11 Stat. of U. P. Mudholka., J. contravened the search could be resisted by the person whose premises are sought to be searched. It may also be that because of the illegality of the search the Court may be inclined to examine carefully the evidence regarding the seizure. Hut beyond these two consequences no further consequence ensues. The High Court has chosen to accept the evidence of the prosecution with regard to the fact of seizure and that being a question to be decided only by the Court of fact, this Court would not re-examine the evidence for satisfying itself as to the correctness or otherwise of the cortclusions reached by the High Court. In so far as the contravention of provisions of s.

342, Code of Criminal Procedure, are concerned it is sufficient to point out that no grievance was made either before the Court of the Additional Sessions Judge or before the High Court that there was such a contravention and the appellant was prejudiced and we cannot allow the pomt to be raised for the first time here, the reason being that whether there was prejudice is a question of fact and cannot be permitted to be agitated for the first time in an appeal under Art. 136 of the Constitution. As regards the fifth point, it is sufficient to say that this Court has held that an appeal from acquit ta! need not be treated differently from an appeal from conviction anr.l if the High Court finds that the acquittal is not justified by the evidence on record it can set aside the acquittal without· coming to the conclusion that there were compel!· ing reasons for doing so. In so far as the sen Lenee is concerned, bearing in mind the fact that th" m'tximum sentence awarded under s.

52 of the Act is seven years it would not be right to say that in ordering the sentences in the three cases to run consecutively the appellant is being very severely punished. In so far as s. 52 of the Act is eoncerned the argument is that th~ prosecution having merely shown that the registered letkrs were recovered from an almirah in the ,house fo which the appellant lives the utmost that could be said is that he was in possession of letters, that is, assuming that he was in the exclusive possession of the house and the almirah. The mere fact of possession, according to learned eounsel, does not suffice to show that the letters were secreted by the appellant. It is contended that for an officer of the post office to be found guilty for any of the acts specified in s. 52 it has further to be shown that he was entrusted with the postal article with respect to which he is alleged to have committed any of those acts. Section 52 of the Act runs thus :

"Penalty for theft, dishonest, misappropriation, secretion, destruction, or throwing away of postal li'rticles.-Whoever, being an officer of the Post Office, commits theft in respect of, or dishonestly misappropriates, or, for any purpose whatsoever, secretes, destroys or throws away, any postal article in course of transmission by post or anything contained therein, shall be. punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to seven years, and shall also be punishable with fine." The first act referred to in this section is theft. Surely it cannot be contended that any 'entrustment' is necessary with regard to that act. Indeed, if entrustment were proved and the article entrusted is not found to have been disposed of in the manner permissible under the Act, the offence committed would be not theft but criminal breach of trust. But,. according to Mr. Misra, the appellant cannot be said to have secreted the letter just because it was found in the almirah which is said to have been in his exclusive possession.

To secrete means, occording to the dictionary "to hide". In connection with a postal article addressed to some person the fact that it is retained in his possession by an officer of the post office in an almirah and that too for an inordinatelv long ?eriod would be t~tamount to hiding that Radhakishau State ofU. P. Mudholkar, J. Radhakishan State of U. P. Ji.fudholkar, J, article. Of course, what act amounts to "secreting" would necessarily depel\d upon the facts of each case and in our opinion in a case like the present, what has been established by the prosecution would sustain an inference of secreting. Further, a perusal of s. 55 makes it clear that where the entrustment of an article is made an ingredient of an offence, the legislature has used appropriate words to make the matter clear.

If, therefore, it was the intention of the legislature that for an officer of the post office to be punished for secreting, destroying or throwing away a postal article in the oucrse of transmission by post, entrustment of that article to him was essential it would have used language similar to that used by it ins. 55. It seems to us that bearing in mind the fact that an officer of the post office having in the course of his duties access to postal articles kept or lying in the post office, the legislature has deliberately enlarged the scope of s. 52 so as to encompass secretion, destruction or throwing away of postal articles by an officer of the post office even though they may not have been entrusted to him or even though the arc not articles with which he is required or is competent to deal in the course of his duties.

The object of the provision is to prevent postal articles 'in course of transmission by post' from being tampered with, and so the 'secreting, destruction' etc., of postal articles to which the provision is directed is to such secreting, destruction etc., as would frustrate or tend to frustrate their delivery to the addressees. Then Mr. Misra contended that it would not be correct to say that the five registe.red letters recovered from the almirah were in the course of transmission by post because that recovery was made 7 or 8 months after those letters had been despatched and that no complaint had ever been made regarding their non-deliverv by the senders or the addressee& of those letters. H~ further referred to the fact that at ]east in respect of three of the registered letters acknowledgments purporting to be from the addressee were obtained and were with the post office.

He admitted that the prosecution allegation wa~ that those documents were fabricated but that case having failed before the Court of Sessions and the Government not having appealed against that part of the decision of that court it must be held that at least three of those letters were duly received by the addressees. The expression ''in course of transmission by post" has been defined ins. 3 (a) of the Act as follows : "a postal article shall be deemed to be in course of transmission by post from the time of its being delivered to a Post Office to the time of its being delivered to the addressee or of its being returned to the sender or otherwise disposed of under Chapter VII." The mere fact that there is even a delay of several months in delivering a postal article to the addressee would not mean that the article had ceased to be in coun:e of transmission.

It is common experience that delivery of postal articles is now and again delayed for a considerable length of time---may be through accident or through the negligence of the postal employees. It is prob:i oly for this reason that the definition clearly lays down that until an article despatched by post is delivered or can be said to be delivered that it will be deemed to be in course of transmission. We cannot, therefore, accept the first part of this contention of Mr. Misra. As regards the other point, that is, based on the fact that there were acknowledgments in respect of three letters in the post office we may point out that the existence of these acknowledgments would no more than raise a presumption that those articles were delivered to the addressees. The addressees have been examined in this case and they have deposed that the le~ters in question were not received by them. Their RadhakUhan State of U. P. Mudholkar, J. Radhakislzan State OJ U. P. Mudholkar, J. evidence has been believed by the High Court and therefore, there is an end to the matter.

In the circumstances, therefore, we do not accept Mr. Misra's contention that the act of an officer of the post office in being in possession of a postal article for an inordinate length of time has no significance and cannot justify the conclusion that he had secreted the article. The next and in our opinion the most important question to be considered is whether the prosecution has established that the five registered letters in question were recovered from the possession of the appellant. As already stated, all that the prosecution has been able to prove is this case is that these letters were found in an almirah of the house in which the appellant lives jointly with his father and of which the key was furnished by the father. Dealing with this question the High Court has observed as follows : "In the first place, the respondent alone had the opportunity and the means to secure such a large number of postal articles.

(2) that at least nine of those postal articles were addressed to the respondent himself (vide Ex. Ka-9, serial no. 66), (3) that Dewan Singh, who, we are informed is a very old man, would not ·foist the said incriminating articles on his son and thus ruin his career for ever, and (4) that the respondent alone can be said to have had some motive for secreting and concealing th<' registered letters and other postal articles in question." Before the High Court could take into ~onsidera­ tion the circumstance that as between himself and ms father the appellant had a better opportunity to I S.C.R. get at postal arti< k> it had to find aftirmatively that the almirah was in the exclusive possession of the appellant. We ha vc not been able to discover any· thing_ in the jud~ment which directly bears on th\s quest10n.

As the key was produced by the appellant s father and there is no evidence that it was ever with the appellant it would not be legitimate to infer that the almirah was even in the appellant's joint, much less in his exclusive, possession. The circumstance that the almirah contained, apart from the registered letters in question, certain other articles belonging to the :.ppellant cannGt sustain an inference that the almirah was in the appellant's possession exclusively or even jointly with his father. We may recall that the almirah contained a large number of articles belonging to the father and since he had the key with him it must be he who must be deemed to be in possession of the almirah and consequently of its contents including the registered letters in question. Apart from that, out of the four reasons given by it, the last, as pointed out by the High Court itself, is a speculative reason and must, therefore, be left out of consideration.

The second 'reason' is no reason at all because a very large number of articles found i1:1 the almirah admittedly belong to the father. The third reason that the father would not foist articles to incriminate the son and thus ruin his career assumes that had the father kept the articles he could have clone so only if he wanted to incriminate . the son. We cannot understand why the father, 1f he happened to get possession of the articles fron: so~e source may not have kept them in the almirah m the same way in which he had kept the other articles belonging to him. That leaves, therefore, only the first reason. We doubt if on the basis of this reason alone the High Court could have held that though the locked almirah w:is not in the exclusive possession of. the appellant, these articles were in his exchisive possession, Jf the point to be Radhak ishari Stal• of U. P. Mrtdholkar, J. 1J62 Radliakisban Stall of U. P. Mudhollcar, J, established was whether the appellant had availed himself of the opportunity to procure the articles it could have been established by showing that he was in their exclusive possession.

But to say that he must be deemed to be in exclusive possession of these articles and not merely in their joint possession along with his father because he had the opportunity to get at the articles and then infer that he must have utilized the oppmtunity and was therefore in their exclusive possession would be arguing in a circle. Moreover since entrustment of the articles has not been established, the taking away of the articles by the appellant from the post office (if that is how he came by the articles) would be theft but it has not been found that he committed any theft. Indeed, had it been so found he could have been convicted under s. 52 without the Court having to consider whether he had secreted the articles. We may mention that Mr. l\1athur who appears for the State does not even suggest that the articles were stolen by the appellant.

Therefore, the contention that he had an opportunity to get at the articles loses all significance and can possibly have no bearing on the question as to the nature of possession attributable to the appellant. In the circurnstauces we must hold that the prosecution has failed to prove that these letters were in the exclusive possession of the appellant. No presumption can, therefore, be drawn against him that he had secreted them from the mere fact that they were found in the almirah which, at best, may be regarded as being in the joint possession of himself and his father. But, as already stated, even an inference of joint possession would not be legitimate. For these reasons we allow the three appeals and set aside the conviction and sentences passed against the appellant. Appeal all.ow&l.