Batchelor, J - (1.)This is an application in revision and the object of it is to set aside an order of discharge passed by the District Magistrate at Broach in a complaint instituted by the petitioner against Rao Bahadur Motilal Chunilal, President of the Broach Municipality and two others, charging them, first with an abetment of committing mischief under Secs.426 and 114 of the Indian Penal. Code and secondly, under Section 297 with trespass in a place of sepulture with intent to wound the feelings or insult the religion of the petitioner and other Mussalmans or with the knowledge that that was likely to be the effect of the trespass.
(2.)The learned Magistrate having examined all the witnesses offered on behalf of the petitioner came to the conclusion that there were no grounds for framing a charge against the persons accused and, therefore, discharged them under Section 253 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The question is 4 whether that order ought now to be disturbed, and, in my judgment a very heavy burden lies upon those who seek to disturb it. Even in cases of regular appeal the ordinary rule is that no Court of Appeal will lightly substitute its own view of evidence for the view of the Court, which had the advantage of seeing and hearing the witnesses. This being an application in revision is, in my opinion, on a lower plane than a regular appeal, and unless the petitioner can show us plain reasons against the order of which he complains. I do not think that he can have any chance of succeeding.
(3.)We have heard arguments at very considerable length, and I have abstained from endeavouring to curtail them only for this reason, that there does lie at the bottom of this very simple question a controversy which evidently excited unfortunate feelings of racial difference among the inhabitants of Broach. And that being so, I considered it my duty to hear all that could be said on one side or the other, without too nicely determining whether everything that was said was strictly admissible upon such an application as this.