Sanwat Khan and Anr. vs State of Rajasthan

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

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Not extracted

Decision Date: 9 December, 1952

Coram: Mahajan, J.

In this case, the judgment was delivered by Justice Mahajan of the Supreme Court of India. The appellants, Sanwat Khan and Kaloo Khan, had been convicted by the Sessions Judge of Nagaur for an offence punishable under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code for the murder of Mahant Ganeshdas and his servant Ganpatia. The Sessions Judge sentenced both appellants to death. Both appellants appealed the conviction and sentence to the High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan at Jodhpur. Their appeal was also considered for confirmation of the death sentence under Section 374 of the Code of Criminal Procedure before that Court. The High Court affirmed the conviction but reduced the death sentence to imprisonment for life, thereby allowing the appeal of both accused persons. The present proceeding is a special leave appeal filed against the decision of the High Court.

The factual background, as set out in the record, indicates that Mahant Ganeshdas, a wealthy individual, resided in the Shri Gopalji temple situated on a hillock near Panchota, approximately one and a half miles from the village. His servant, Ganpatia Daroga, lived with him at the temple. On the morning of 1 January 1948, the bodies of both Mahant Ganeshdas and Ganpatia were discovered inside the temple, having been slain by injuries inflicted with an axe. The premises had been ransacked, and various boxes and almirahs were found opened. The incident was reported to the police by Thakur Daulat Singh, a notable of the village, and at the time of the report, the identity of the perpetrators and the motive behind the robbery and murders were unknown. Following police investigation, Kaloo Khan was arrested on 13 January 1948, and on the same day he produced a gold kanthi (Exhibit P-13/A) that had been buried in the ground at his bara. Sanwat Khan was arrested on 18 January 1948, and on the following day he produced a silver plate (tashak) bearing an inscription, also recovered from his house where it had been buried. Both were committed to the Sessions Court, which convicted them as previously described. The accused denied the charges, claiming that the prosecution was driven by enmity with Thakur Daulat Singh, the village jagirdar. The evidence presented did not include any direct proof of the appellants’ participation in the murders. The Sessions Judge relied primarily on the testimony of a Madari identified as P.W. 7, the recovery of the kanthi and tashak at the request of the accused, observations that the accused had been near the crime scene on the day preceding the murders, and that they left the village soon thereafter, as well as evidence linking the accused to the axe (Exhibit P-5/A). The High Court, however, held that

The High Court examined the testimony of Madari, identified as witness 7, and concluded that his evidence could not be regarded as reliable. The Court also found that the prosecution had failed to establish any connection between the axe presented as evidence and an individual named Kaloo Khan. In addition, the Court rejected the claim that the accused had departed the village only after the crime, observing that the accused had actually moved to settle in another location a few months before the incident in question. Consequently, the Court held that the remaining facts on which the learned Sessions Judge had based his conviction were of no material significance. After essentially dismissing the entirety of the circumstantial material that the Sessions Judge had relied upon, the High Court nonetheless affirmed the conviction of the appellants. It did so by focusing exclusively on the single fact that two objects, previously described, had been recovered at the request of the accused. The Court expressed the view that, because the appellants offered no explanation for their possession of the items that formerly belonged to the Mahant, the only logical inference was that they must have participated in the heinous act.

Counsel for the appellants, identified as Mr Umrigar, argued that the recovery of the deceased’s belongings, even when made at the behest of the accused, could at most create a presumption that the appellants were thieves or had received stolen goods with knowledge of their illicit origin; the argument, however, did not prove that the appellants had carried out the murders. The Court found that this argument possessed merit. It observed that the unexplained possession of stolen property constituted the sole circumstance linking the accused to the charges of murder and theft. The Court held that a conviction for murder could not be sustained unless the possession of the stolen items could not be explained by any hypothesis other than the commission of murder. Because no evidence existed regarding the manner in which the murders or the robbery occurred, the Court considered it plausible that the accused, at some time after witnessing the deaths of the Mahant and Ganpatia, might have removed the items from the temple themselves or might have received them from the actual perpetrator(s). The prosecution had introduced evidence indicating that Mangu Khan, the father of the two accused, had long harboured intent to murder the Mahant. Additionally, Madari, witness 7, an ex-convict, testified that he had been approached to join a conspiracy to kill the Mahant. The Court noted that it was not improbable that either of the two brothers or another person could have committed the murder, and that some of the stolen property might have subsequently come into the brothers’ possession. Nonetheless, in the complete absence of any direct or circumstantial proof, the Court determined that the sole fact of the unexplained recovery of the two articles from the appellants’ homes allowed only the inference, under illustration A to Section 114 of the Evidence Act, that the appellants were either receivers of stolen property or the thieves themselves; this inference did not, however, necessarily establish that they had committed the theft or the murders.

In the case, the Court observed that the two murders were alleged to have been committed at the same moment, and that the accused presented the stolen articles approximately fourteen days after the theft, so that the only allegation that could be made against them was that they had either received the items knowing them to be stolen or had stolen the items themselves; however, because no other evidence was available, the Court could not conclude that the accused were also guilty of murder. The State’s counsel, in support of the High Court’s view, relied upon a decision of the Madras High Court reported as Queen-Empress v. Sami, 13 Mad 426, and cited the head-note of that report which stated that recent and unexplained possession of stolen property, which would be presumptive evidence against a prisoner on a charge of robbery, would likewise constitute evidence against the prisoner on a charge of murder. The Court noted, however, that the head-note did not accurately reflect the judgment of the learned judges, for the Madras High Court had observed that where murder and robbery were shown to be components of a single transaction, recent and unexplained possession of the stolen property could be taken as presumptive evidence against the accused on both the robbery and the murder charges. The Court then pointed out that in the present matter there was no direct or circumstantial proof that the robbery and the murders formed parts of a single transaction, that the exact time during the night when the incidents occurred was unknown, and that the bodies of the Mahant and Ganpatia were discovered only on the following morning together with evidence of looting. Referring to the decision of Beaumont, C. J., and Sen J. in Bhikha Gobar v. Emperor, AIR 1943 Bom 458, the Court affirmed that the mere fact that an accused produced, shortly after a murder, ornaments that had belonged to the deceased was insufficient to justify an inference that the accused had committed the murder; additional material linking the accused to the homicide was required to sustain a conviction for that offence. The Court also considered a series of authorities that had been summarized in a bench decision of the Allahabad High Court in State v. Shankar Prasad, where in some cases a presumption of guilt had been drawn from possession of stolen articles soon after a murder. After examining those authorities, the Court concluded that each decision was based on the particular facts and evidence of the case before it, and that no universal legal proposition could be extracted from them. Accordingly, the Court held that no rigid rule could be laid down as to the inference to be drawn from a specific circumstance; nevertheless, where the sole piece of evidence against an accused was the recovery of stolen property and the surrounding facts suggested that the theft and the murder might have been carried out simultaneously, it

In this case the Court held that it is not safe to infer that the individual who possessed the stolen articles was the murderer. The Court emphasized that mere suspicion cannot substitute for proof. Accordingly, for the reasons set out earlier, the Court could not sustain the conviction of the appellants under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and therefore acquitted them of that charge. Nevertheless, the Court found that it was clear that each appellant either participated in the theft or received the stolen property knowing that it had been stolen. Both appellants had been charged with committing theft in a building while being armed with certain weapons, and on that basis they could be convicted of theft committed in a dwelling house. The Court therefore convicted them of the offence punishable under Section 380 of the Indian Penal Code. Counsel for the appellants submitted that, because the appellants had already been serving a life sentence of transportation for the past three years, the appropriate punishment in the present case should be deemed to have been satisfied by the time already served. The Court accepted that argument, observing that the punishment already endured by the accused would meet the ends of justice. Consequently, the Court sentenced each appellant, under Section 380, to three years of rigorous imprisonment, and because they had already undergone that period, the Court directed their immediate release. The appeal was allowed in the manner indicated, resulting in a partial allowance of the appeal.