JIA LAL Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal which certainly does present peculiar and interesting features, particularly from the legal point of view. It has been extremely well argued and one may say at once that if it were not for a verdict standing against him of a jury given after an almost perfect example of summing up, Mr. Shinde, who appears for the appellants, would have had a very strong case for shaking one's confidence in the actual result as it stands, for, on the view which we are forced to take the result is not unlikely to appear to what is called, "the man in the street," as a somewhat incongruous one; but we do not shrink from that conclusion because we are satisfied that it is the inevitable result of the application of the legal principles by which in an appellate Court we are bound.

(2.) The charge in substance was robbery with murder, under circumstances which really make such an offence one offence and not two. On the face of it the murder arose out of and could only have been committed in the course of the robbery, and the strong presumption is that the man or men who committed the robbery also committed the murder, if indeed it would not be more correct to state it in the reverse order. The accused of whom there were three, were charged with two offences separately, the robbery under Section 394 and the murder under Section 302, but the hearing of the two charges was a joint hearing though the tribunals, like the charges were two; and in an appellate Court, the principles which have to guide us are like the charges and the tribunals, twofold; that is to say, they do not work upon the same lines.

(3.) After a summing up which, as we have said, was admirable and indeed would be difficult to be improved upon, and was certainly favourable, particularly in its closing observations to the accused, the jury convicted the three accused of the robbery upon the uncorroborated testimony of a man, who, on his own statement, was clearly an abettor if not an important principal, and who also gave untruthful evidence in Court. The jury were solemnly warned more than once of the danger of acting upon such testimony and of their right to ignore it. They were not only told that they had not to believe the witness's evidence, but they were also told that if they had any doubt they ought to give the benefit of it to the accused. In spite of this the jury, who saw the man, who heard his story, who were able to make up their minds whether they believed the part of it which pointed against the accused, although they disbelieved the part of it which applied to himself, and who saw the accused and presumably paid great attention to the trial and the summing up, convicted the three men of robbery.