SAGARMAL KHEMRAJ Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) . This is an application in revision against an order made by the learned Presidency Magistrate, Third Court, Bombay, directing that the two applicants be forwarded to Calcutta through the Commissioner of Police, Bombay, to stand their trial before the Chief Presidency Magistrate, Calcutta, upon the charges set out in the warrant.

(2.) IT appears that on June 12 last a robbery was committed in Calcutta of forty-four currency notes of the denomination of Rs. 1,000 each. One of those currency notes, the numbers of which had been taken, was subsequently traced to the two applicants, and the Bombay Police communicated this fact to the Calcutta police. Thereupon non-bailable warrants were issued by the learned Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta on June 25, 1940, stating that the two applicants stand charged with the offence under Section 392 of the Indian Penal Code, that is to say, of robbery. The warrants are addressed to the " O/C concerned " and refer to the two applicants merely by their names, the first " Sagarmal Khemraj " and the other " Kaluram Hirachand," and in the margin of the warrants is a note initialled by the learned Chief Presidency Magistrate, Calcutta, to this effect: " Forwarded to the 3rd Presidency Magistrate, Bombay, for favour of execution and return." I will return presently to the question of the validity of those warrants.

(3.) I need hardly point out that the power of directing the arrest of some person at a place outside the local limits of the jurisdiction of a Court, particularly when that place is far removed from the local limits, is one which should be exercised with the utmost circumspection. To arrest two merchants of Bombay and take them in custody all the way to Calcutta could only be justified if the Calcutta Court had substantial reason to believe that the Bombay people had committed the offence. The learned Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta is, of course, a very responsible officer, and I am quite sure that he would not act with any lack of a sense of responsibility. We do not know what materials he had before him, but on the materials elicited by the learned Presidency Magistrate, Third Court, Bombay, it does seem difficult to suppose that these arrested persons committed robbery in Calcutta on June12. Had we thought that the warrants were properly issued, we should probably have released the accused on bail in order to communicate further with the Chief Presidency Magistrate of Calcutta; but I think that if the learned Chief Presidency Magistrate had come to the conclusion that it was necessary that the applicants should be sent under arrest from Bombay to Calcutta, the Court in Bombay would have been bound so to order.