- (1.) THE appellants, Harmal and Mata Prasad, have been convicted by the Sessions Judge of Saharanpur Under Section 201, IPC and sentenced to four years' R. I. and to pay a fine of Rs. 500/- each, and, in default of payment of fine, to undergo nine months' further R. I. They were tried for the murder of a man called Hukain Chand living in a part of village That which is inhabited mainly by Harijans, The murdered man was a Jat and the two appellants are Harijans.
(2.) A summary of the first information report lodged at police station Manglore, ten miles from village Thoi, at 8. 11 p. m. , on 30-10-1967, may be usefully given here because the learned Counsel for the appellants has argued that the appellants, who were acquitted of murder, could not even be convicted of an offence punishable Under Section 201, IPC as, among other reasons, the F. I. R. itself shows that the cropse of the deceased had actually been found before the F. I. R. was lodged and that there was no eye witnesses of either the murder or the removal of the corpse. The suggestion was that, as there were no eye witnesses of the occurrence and the names of the appellants were mentioned out of suspicion, the F. I. R. itself was written out after deliberation and after the police had actually visited the place of occurrence. The contents of the long F. I. R. lodged by Ilam Chand, P. W. 1, giving the names of six persons, namely Mata, Harmal, Atru, Nagina, Indaram, and Jai Kishan, in the column of the accused, may be summarised as follows: IIam Chand's brother had gone at about 7 a. m. to plough his cherry field which is about three furlongs from village Thoi. Ilam Chand also followed and cut some cherry crop but came back home at about 10 a. m. When his brother, who was also expected to return, did not come back until 12 noon to 1 p. m. Ilam Chand went to look for him at the field and found the bullocks and the plough in the field but not his brother. He also found the shoes and the chadar of his brother at the boundary. Furthermore, he found blood lying in the field and also marks of dragging over which also blood was scattered. These marks continued upon the south-eastern boundary of the field but could not be found after that. Ham Chand came running home and gave an account, of what he had seen to his mother who told him that he should go and search for his brother and expressed her fear that Harijans may have murdered Hukam Chand because she had heard, on the previous evening, the sister of Phullu saying that Hukum Chand will reap, in a day or two, the consequences of having beaten Phullu Harijan. Birnal and Jhanda, Gujers, of the village had also heard this conversation. Ilam Chand went into the village and spread the news and started looking for his brother. In the course of the search and enquiry by Ilam Chand and his brother Ram Swarup, they met Sandal who said that his son Rajpal, aged about 10-11 years, had. when he had gone to drink some water at a spring, seen Hukam Chand being dragged towards the East by six persons out of whom he had recognised Harmal and Mata, Harijans, but he did" not recognise others. Later, Ilam Chand met Gyan Singh of Barhalpur who told him that Mata, Harmal, Atru, Pahal Singh, Nagina, Indaram, and Jai Kishan were seen by him going with lathis and ballams between 11 and 12 in the day from the village towards the jungle, and, behind them, came the father of Pahal Singh. The father had called and brought back Pahal Singh. Ilam Chand, therefore, contacted Pahal Singh and his father but they told him nothing. Mata and Harmal and other persons, mentioned in the column of the accused, are accused of murder and causing the body of Hukum Chand to disappear. Previous to this occurrence, Hukam Chand had given 2-3 lathi blows to Phullu Harijan after an exchange of abuses after Phullu had abused him for having been reprimanded over breaking some sugarcane stems. This was the grievance of the accused persons who had killed Hukam Chand and made the corpse disappear. Harmal is the real brother of Phullu.
(3.) THE first information report, the substance of which is set out above, after eliminating some details about what Ilam Chand was himself doing in the morning, is couched in the village dialect and gives every indication of being quite genuine. The most important part of it, according to the learned Counsel for the appellants, is that Ilam Chand has already stated there that Hukam Chand had been killed and that his corpse had been hidden. It is true that Ilam Chand makes that statement in the first information report, but, it is obvious that this is the inference of Ilam Chand from facts set out in detail in the F. I. R. It is difficult to understand r why, if a case was being concocted with the aid of the police after the Sub-Inspector had visited the village, so that even the F. I. R. was written out after the recovery of the corpse of Hukam Chand from a sugarcane field, the concoction should not proceed further so as to make at least Ilam Chand and his brother Ram Swarup eye-witnesses of the murder. It is well established that a first information report can only be used to contradict or corroborate the maker of it The very lengthy and thorough cross-examination of Ilam Chand, P. W. 1, could elicit no contradiction, much less a material contradiction, between his statement made in the F. I. R. and that made by him at the trial. Ilam Chand refuted the suggestion made to him that the corpse was found in the day-time first and that the F. I. R. was concocted afterwards with the help of the police. Ilam Chand was not even asked why he had stated in the F. I. R. , that the accused, mentioned in the F. I, R. , had murdered and then hidden Hukam Chand's corpse. The reason for this failure seems to be that Ilam Chand would have probably stated that this was a very correct and natural inference for him to arrive at from the facts he had discovered of which he gave such a detailed account.;