LAWS(PVC)-1939-12-41

NEBTI MANDAL Vs. EMPEROR

Decided On December 12, 1939
NEBTI MANDAL Appellant
V/S
EMPEROR Respondents

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The three appellants were charged together and tried at one trial for offences under Section 302, I.P.C., and also under Section 201, the substance of the prosecution case being that one or more of the accused on the night of Wednesday 1 March 1939 at the residence of all of them committed murder of Mt. Paltanbati widow of Nebti's brother Jukti and that all of them secretly and hastily disposed of the body in order to prevent detection of the crime and subsequently gave false explanation to account for the death. As to the propriety of trying an accused at one trial both for murder and for causing the disappearance of evidence of it, the old decisions in which it was held some times that only a person completely innocent of the murder can be convicted under Section 201 have been reconsidered in some of the recent cases. In Begu V/s. Emperor the Judicial Committee affirmed the conviction under Section 201 of three persons who had been tried on the charge of murder ( Section 302), but the evidence being insufficient to establish this charge against them, had been convicted under Section 201.

(2.) Their Lordships did not examine in detail the exact point whether in order to be convicted under Section 201, the accused person must be innocent of the major offence; but it is clear from the result of the case itself that to be accused of the, major offence, does not in itself confer on the criminal any immunity from conviction in respect of the concealment of the evidence. In a case of this Court Rup Narain Kurmi V/s. Emperor the accused had been tried on charges both under Section 302 and under Section 201 and the trial which was before a jury had resulted in their conviction under Section 201. The conviction was affirmed, Fazl Ali J. observing that he was inclined to accept the restricted interpretation of Section 201 which has been, adopted in some of the recent decisions and according to which a person cannot escape conviction under this Section merely because he has been charged also with the principal offence or because there are some grounds for suspicion that he might be the principal culprit. But the learned Judge was not prepared to go so far as the Judges in the Allahabad case in Emperor V/s. Hari Piari in which they were dealing with a case in which there was evidence that one Beni Singh had been done to death by one of three persons; the body had been done away with by all three and the Sessions Judge found himself unable to convict any of them for concealing the corpse lest he should accidentally be convicting the murderer himself which certainly earlier decisions had said could not be done. The Judges observed that the point whether Section 201 applies to the actual culprit in a case of murder is obviously academic. None the less we are unable to agree with the view that a person who has actually committed a crime himself--whether murder or any other crime--is any the leas guilty of removing traces thereof, if it is proved against him that he has done so, because he was the person who actually committed the offence. If the Legislature intended to provide such an exception, they would undoubtedly have said so in express language.

(3.) In a later decision, namely in In re Chinna Gangappa AIR (1930) Mad 870 which came before the Madras High Court, Wallace and Jackson JJ., examined the proposition that Secs.201 to 203, I.P.C., have no application to the person who actually committed the main offence mentioned in the Section and that the person who committed the main offence cannot be himself found guilty of causing evidence of that offence to disappear or of giving false information about it. After examining the decisions they observed: The true principle seems to be that there is no law preventing the main offender being convicted under Secs.201 to 203, but in practice no Court will convict an accused both of the main offence and under these Sections. But if the commission of the main offence is not brought home to him, then he can be convicted under Secs.201 to 203. Therefore there is no misjoinder in charging an accused in the alternative with the main offence and under Secs.201 and 203, I.P.C., nor is there anything irregular or improper in a Judge holding, as the learned Sessions Judge has done in this case, that, while the accused is himself not free from the suspicion of being the actual murderer, he can be none the less convicted under Section 201 or Section 203.