IN RE: AMEERJAN Vs.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE accused who has appealed to this Court hag been convicted for an offence under Section 489 -C, Penal Code and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for three years by the 3rd Additional Sessions Judge, Bangalore Division. The case against him was that he was found in possession of 81 counterfeit ten rupee currency notes on 23 -10 -1948. The learned Sessions Judge has found that the notes in question are counterfeit. The same is not seriously disputed before us and is amply established by the evidence of P.W. 10, Coin and Currency Expert attached to the C. I. D. Mad. ras and who has been trained in the Bombay Mint and Nasik Currency Press. The appearance of the notes also makes it clear that they are not genuine and though a few of them are quite crude imitations, quite large number of others look very similar to genuine notes.

(2.) THE Sessions Judge has also found that the accused must be held to have been in possession of these notes with a view to use them as genuine or with the object that they may be used as genuine knowing or having reason to believe that they were forged ones. It is contended before us that conclusion of the learned Judge is not correct.

(3.) IT was further contended for the appellant that this evidence is not sufficient to hold that the accused was in possession of the currency notes within the meaning of Section 489C, Penal Code and that the circumstance that the accused showed the place where the notes where hidden could not raise a presumption that the accused hid them there. It was argued that at the worst it would only mean that the accused knew that the notes in question were hidden in that place and nothing more. That place where these notes were found is not a public place in the sense that there was an unrestricted access to it. D. W. 4 Mustafa has deposed that only mud and sand were stocked in that incomplete house and that he used to lock the door to prevent children entering and wasting the mad and sand. It was apparently within the special means of knowledge of the accused that the notes were secreted in the place and he has not explained as to how he came by that knowledge. In his first statement before the Committing Magistrate he has not denied that he showed the place wherefrom the notes were recovered though he adds that the house is not his and that Mustafa Sab was getting it built. He later on apparently realised the significance of his action and in his statement before the Sessions Judge he has expressly denied that he took out notes from that house and gave them to the police. It was open to the accused to have at least stated in Court how he came to know that the notes were secreted there. Mr. Krishna Rao, learned counsel for the appellant, has argued that it is not part of the duty of the accused to have given any such explanation. We are not inclined to agree with him. The object of Section 342, Criminal P. C., is to enable the accused to explain the circumstances in the prosecution evidence which are against him. If the accused, when confronted with the large body of evidence to the effect that he took the police and showed them the place where the notes were secreted, kept silent or denied the whole affair, it would not be unnatural to presume that he had either secreted them there himself or knew who had done so. It would also not be unreasonable to presume that if someone else to his knowledge had so secreted them it is not at all likely that the accused would be shielding him but would disclose the name of the latter.