Lachman Singh And Others vs The State

Rewritten Version Notice: This is a rewritten version of the original judgment.

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Criminal Appeal No. 22 of 1950

Decision Date: 21 March 1952

Coram: Saiyid Fazal Ali, Vivian Bose

The case of Lachman Singh and Others v. State was decided by the Supreme Court of India on 21 March 1952. The judgment was authored by Justice Saiyid Fazal Ali, with Justices Vivian Bose and another Justice named Fazal Ali forming the bench. The petitioners were Lachman Singh and several co-accused, while the respondent was the State. The decision was recorded under the citations 1952 AIR 167 and 1952 SCR 839. Subsequent citator references include RF 1954 SC 204 (5), D 1956 SC 116 (49-63), R 1956 SC 546 (5), R 1962 SC 1116 (10), C 1965 SC 328 (8-9), R 1988 SC 1353 (16) and F 1990 SC 1982 (3). The judgment concerned the provisions of Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, dealing with the admissibility of statements by several accused persons that lead to the discovery of facts. The headnote summarised that three accused persons, identified as K, M and S, gave police statements indicating that dismembered bodies had been disposed of in a stream. Following those statements, the police accompanied the accused to the stream, where each pointed out locations at which different parts of the bodies were recovered. The accused argued that only the information first supplied should be admissible under Section 27, contending that a fact discovered as a result of one accused’s statement could not be deemed rediscovered on the basis of another’s statement, and that without proof of which statement was made first the discoveries could not be proved against any of them.

The Court held that, even assuming the argument was correct, the evidence showed that accused S had directed the police to a particular spot on the stream, where blood-stained earth was found outside the village and the trunk of one of the bodies was identified. The High Court had been satisfied that S had made the “initial pointing out,” and therefore the rule of Section 27 applied and the discoveries were admissible. The Court further observed that in cases where clear and unimpeachable independent statements by several accused are made, some earlier decisions have extended the rule beyond the language of Section 27, and such extensions may need to be reconsidered in future judgments. The matter arose on criminal appeal No. 22 of 1950, an appeal from a judgment and order dated 29 June 1950 of the High Court of Judicature at Simla (presided over by Chief Justice Weston and Justice Khosla) in criminal appeal No. 432 of 1949, which itself stemmed from a judgment dated 5 August 1949.

The matter before the Supreme Court arose from a conviction rendered by the Court of the Additional Sessions Judge at Amritsar in Sessions Trial number 7 of 1949 and Case number 8 of 1949. The appellants were represented by counsel Jai Gopal Sethi, assisted by R. L. Kohli, while the State was represented by counsel Gopal Singh. The judgment was dated 21 March 1952 and was delivered by Justice Fazl Ali.

The three appellants had been tried before the Additional Sessions Judge at Amritsar and were found guilty of murdering two men, identified as Darshan Singh and Achhar Singh. The trial court sentenced each of the appellants to transportation for life. Upon review, the High Court of Punjab affirmed both the conviction and the sentence, and it subsequently issued a certificate under article 134(1)(c) of the Constitution, indicating that the case was fit for appeal to the Supreme Court. Consequently, the present appeal was filed.

The factual background can be summarized as follows. In the evening of 16 December 1948, shortly before sunset, Achhar Singh, who later became one of the victims, proceeded to the residence of an individual named Inder Singh in the village of Dalam in order to have his paddy husked. His brother, Darshan Singh, who was employed as a driver in Amritsar, traveled from Amritsar to Dalam on the same evening. After learning from his father that Achhar Singh had gone to Inder Singh’s house, Darshan Singh also went to that location. While the two brothers were returning home, they were intercepted in a lane adjoining Inder Singh’s house by the three appellants together with two of their relatives. The five assailants were armed with deadly weapons and inflicted multiple injuries on the brothers, causing their deaths at the scene.

Following the murders, the appellants and their accomplices bound the two bodies in cloth wrappers known as “kheses” and transported them to the village of Saleempura. There, two additional individuals, identified as Ajaib Singh and Banta Singh, joined the group. The bodies were subsequently dismembered and the fragments were discarded in the Sakinala stream, a location situated approximately five miles from the village of Dalam. Bela Singh, the father of the deceased brothers, claimed to have witnessed the incident. Out of fear, he did not leave the village during the night, but he departed about two hours before sunrise the next morning and filed a first-information report at 10 a.m. with the nearest police station.

A police officer arrived in Dalam shortly after the report was lodged and, after completing an investigation, a charge-sheet was prepared against seven persons, including the three present appellants. At trial, five of the accused were charged with offences under section 302 read with section 149, and also under section 201 read with section 149 of the Indian Penal Code. The remaining two accused faced charges under section 201 read with section 149 of the same code. The learned Sessions Judge, after hearing the evidence, convicted the three appellants and two other persons under section 302 read with section 149, sentencing them to transportation for life. In addition, Ajaib Singh was convicted under section 201 read with section 149 and was sentenced accordingly.

In the first instance the accused Bantu Singh received a sentence of three years’ rigorous imprisonment, but he was later acquitted. On appeal the Punjab High Court confirmed the convictions of the present appellants and acquitted the other three individuals who had been tried alongside them. Before examining the evidence presented by the prosecution, the Court found it necessary to refer to the motive that had been described for the murder. According to the material before the Court, in June 1947 Natha Singh, who was the father of the third appellant Swaran Singh, was murdered. In connection with that killing Darshan Singh, Achhar Singh and their brother Sulakhan Singh were charged. The trial that followed resulted in Darshan Singh’s acquittal, a sentence of one and a half years’ rigorous imprisonment for Achhar Singh, and a term of seven years’ rigorous imprisonment for Sulakhan Singh. The judgment of the Sessions Judge in that earlier case was delivered shortly before the incident that gave rise to the present proceedings, and it was common ground that Achhar Singh had been released on bail by the appellate court and was at large at the time of the later crime. It was alleged that the appellants and their relatives were displeased with Darshan Singh’s acquittal and with the relatively light punishment imposed on Achhar Singh, and that, out of frustration and a desire for revenge, they had committed the present murder. Counsel for the appellants admitted before the Court that those facts provided a strong motive for the murder, but he also argued that the same facts could equally suggest a motive for falsely implicating the appellants, especially because the alleged murderers could not be seen or identified at the time of the offence. Consequently the Court set out the evidence advanced by the prosecution, which was divided into two categories: direct evidence and circumstantial evidence. The direct evidence consisted of the testimony of four eyewitnesses. The first was Bela Singh, the father of the deceased, who said that he went to the scene after hearing an outcry and that he witnessed the assault on his sons. The second and third witnesses were Inder Singh and his wife, Mst. Taro, who reported that the murdered men had come to their house to have paddy husked and that they lived in a house adjoining the lane where the killings occurred. The fourth eyewitness was Gurcharan Singh, a resident of a different village, who stated that he saw the incident while riding his bicycle toward the village of Dhadar. The circumstantial evidence, which had been relied upon by the High Court, could be summarised as follows: first, the second appellant Massa Singh, who had been arrested on 18 December 1948, was found wearing a pyjama that bore stains of human blood; second, the third appellant Swaran Singh, also arrested on 18 December 1948, on 19 December led the police to his locked haveli, and when the door was opened two wrappers, known as kheses, stained with human blood were recovered; third, Swaran Singh…

The witness identified a location on the route to Sakinala where the two deceased bodies had been temporarily placed before being carried to the watercourse, and the police removed earth stained with blood from that spot. He also guided the police to the bank of Sakinala and indicated the trunk of Darshan Singh’s body, which was lying in the nala. Furthermore, Lachhman Singh, who had been taken into custody on 28 December 1948, indicated a dilapidated khola near Sakinala, from which three spears, one kirpan and a datar, all bearing human blood, were recovered. The Sessions Judge, after hearing the testimony, expressed that the evidence of the eye-witnesses was so consistent, reliable and of such nature that, in his opinion, it was conclusively established that the five accused—Lachhman Singh, Katha Singh, Massa Singh, Charan Singh and Swaran Singh—had actually murdered both Darshan Singh and Achhar Singh. He added that this fact was further substantiated by the later statements of PW 8 Bahadur Singh, PW 9 Gian Singh and PW 11 Bhagwan Singh, who had witnessed various recoveries made at the direction of all the accused. The High Court judges, having rejected most of the criticisms leveled against the witnesses, nonetheless concluded that, “in all the circumstances of the case, it would be proper not to rely upon the oral evidence implicating particular accused unless there is some circumstantial evidence to support it.” After setting this standard, they examined the circumstantial evidence against each accused and upheld the convictions of the three appellants, holding that the referenced circumstantial evidence sufficiently corroborated the oral testimony. The appellants’ case was presented at length by counsel, who argued every possible point in their favour with great force and clarity. Applying the principles articulated by this Court, which delimit the scope of a criminal appeal after the trial court and High Court have examined the case, the present appeal raised a narrow issue. The High Court, according to its judgment, did not reject the oral evidence outright; rather, exercising prudence, it chose not to convict any accused unless there were additional circumstances that reinforced the eye-witness testimony concerning that individual. It is clear from the judgment that the corroboration the High Court required was not the type demanded for the testimony of an approver or accomplice, but rather corroboration by circumstances that would assure the court that the particular accused were indeed involved in the murders. By this standard, which the judges were free to prescribe, the facts of each appellant fell within the rule they themselves had established for guiding their decision-making.

In evaluating the evidence, the Court explained that the required corroboration was not the kind needed for an approver or an accomplice, but rather corroboration through circumstances that would give confidence to the eye-witness testimony and convince the Court that the specific accused were truly involved in the murder of the deceased. Applying this standard, which the High Court judges were free to formulate, the Court observed that each appellant’s case fell squarely within the rule that the trial judges had set for themselves. The learned counsel for the appellants had objected to the blood-stained pyjama recovered from Massa Singh on two grounds: first, that the evidence did not disclose the extent of the blood stains; and second, that it was highly unlikely that an accused would continue to wear a pyjama so stained after committing the offence. The lower courts had considered this criticism and, in the view of the Court, the objection did not materially affect the conclusions reached by those courts. Regarding the recovery of blood-stained weapons discovered through the efforts of Lachhman Singh, the appellants argued that the entire evidentiary record of that recovery should be thrown out because the police investigation was not straightforward and appeared to be aimed at manufacturing incriminating evidence against each accused. The Court stated that it was not its function to re-examine the evidence anew, and that an argument on a factual point that had been rejected by the trial and appellate courts could not be used to revive the appeal. The appellants also contended that the discoveries made through Swaran Singh were inadmissible under section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, which provides: “When any fact is deposed to as discovered in consequence of information received from a person accused of an offence in the custody of a police officer, so much of such information, whether it amounts to a confession or not, as relates distinctly to the fact there-by discovered, may be proved.” To clarify the issue, the Court summarized the essential facts. The prosecution alleged that on the morning of 19 December 1948, the three accused—Katba Singh, Massa Singh and Swaran Singh—were interrogated by police and that their statements, recorded by the police, disclosed that the dead bodies had been disposed of in the Sakinala. Subsequently, a police party accompanied the three accused to the Sakinala, where each accused indicated a location where different portions of the dead bodies were found. The learned counsel for the appellants cited several precedents interpreting section 27, arguing that the provision limited admissibility to information first obtained from an accused and that facts discovered subsequently from another accused could not be re-introduced.

In this case the Court considered the meaning of section 27 of the Evidence Act. The provision was interpreted to mean that only the first information given by an accused is admissible, and once a fact has been discovered as a result of that first information, it cannot be said to have been re-discovered as a result of information obtained from another accused person. The prosecution was therefore asked to produce evidence showing which of the three accused had supplied the information first. The head constable who recorded the statements of the three accused did not indicate which of them had spoken first. During cross-examination, Bahadur Singh, a witness who had attested to the recovery memos, was specifically asked which accused had provided the information first, and he replied, “I cannot say from whom information was got first.” Because the identity of the first informant could not be established, the counsel for the appellants argued that the alleged discoveries could not be proved against any of the accused. The Court observed that if the prosecution’s evidence is open to suspicion and if the police have deliberately attributed similar confessional statements about discovered facts to different accused persons in order to implicate all of them, the matter requires a very cautious approach. Nevertheless, the Court noted that when clear and unimpeachable evidence exists of independent and authentic statements of the kind referred to in section 27, made by several accused either simultaneously or at different times, the rule must be applied accordingly. The Court expressed the view that some of the arguments relied upon by the learned counsel for the appellants may have extended beyond what the language of section 27 permits, and that future consideration might be needed to review such cases. For the purpose of the present appeal, however, the Court stated that even if the appellants’ argument – which had been accepted by the High Court – were correct, the discoveries made on the information furnished by Swaran Singh could not be disregarded. The Court recognised that several of the accused might have told the police that the bodies could be recovered in the Sakinala stream, which runs for many miles, but such vague information would not have led to any discovery unless an accused guided the police to the exact location where parts of the two bodies were found. From the testimony of the head constable and from Bahadur Singh’s evidence, it was clear that Swaran Singh directed the police via Salimpura to a specific spot on the Sakinala, that on his insistence blood-stained earth was recovered from a place outside the village, and that he also pointed out the trunk of the

In this case, the Court noted that the learned judges of the High Court had been satisfied, as their judgment showed, that Swaran Singh’s direction to the police constituted the initial pointing out of the spot where the body of Darshan Singh was recovered, and that this finding brought the matter within the rule that the appellants’ counsel claimed should govern the present dispute. The Court further observed that counsel for the appellants had drawn attention to the post-mortem report, which indicated that partially digested rice was present in the stomachs of both deceased persons, and he argued that such a finding suggested the fatal incident occurred at night after the victims had taken their evening meal together. The Court recognised that this line of argument raised a factual issue which the High Court had not neglected to examine. However, the Court also referred to standard texts on medical jurisprudence, noting that many factors influence the rate of digestion, and it cited earlier cases in which rice remained incompletely digested even after a considerable interval following the last meal. Moreover, the Court found that no evidence had been placed before it to establish the exact time of the victims’ last meal or to identify any other food items that might have been consumed with the rice. Consequently, the Court held that the doctor’s finding did not necessarily determine the time of the occurrence and therefore did not undermine the prosecution’s case on that point. The Court also addressed the contention that, because no charge had been framed under section 302 read with section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, the High Court could not have altered the appellants’ conviction from section 302 read with section 149 to one under section 302 read with section 34 after the acquittal of the remaining accused. The Court explained that the factual matrix of the case permitted the charge to have been framed alternatively either under section 302 with section 149 or under section 302 with section 34, rendering the contention without merit. In the Court’s opinion, there was no basis to interfere with the judgment of the lower courts, and consequently the appeal was dismissed and the conviction and sentence of the appellants were upheld. Nevertheless, the Court endorsed the High Court’s view that, given the gruesome nature of the crime, the sentence imposed by the Additional Sessions Judge was unduly lenient and that the reasons offered for the lighter penalty were wholly inadequate. Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed. Counsel for the appellant and counsel for the respondent were recorded.