Ram Bharosey vs State Of Uttar Pradesh

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

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Not extracted

Decision Date: 25 February, 1954

Coram: Venkatarama Ayyar

In the matter of Ram Bharosey versus the State of Uttar Pradesh, decided on 25 February 1954, the Supreme Court of India, with Justice Venkatarama Ayyar authoring the judgment, considered an appeal for special leave from the decision of the Allahabad High Court. The High Court had upheld the conviction of the appellant under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and the death sentence imposed by the Sessions Judge of Unnao. The prosecution alleged that on the night of 26 May 1952 the appellant murdered his father, Manna, and his step-mother, Kailasha. No direct evidence linked the appellant to the homicides; the issue before the court was whether the circumstantial evidence presented was adequate to sustain the conviction.

The appellant had become estranged from his father approximately four years before the incident and was residing separately in a house divided from his father’s by a gonda. On the morning of 27 May 1952 the bodies of Manna and Kailasha were discovered, each lying amid blood and bearing multiple injuries. The discovery was reported to the chaukidar, identified as P.W. 1, who recorded the First Information Report (Exhibit P-1). In that report the chaukidar wrote: “Bitter feelings existed between Manna and his son Ram Bharosey since long. I think that Ram Bharosey certainly has his hands in this murder.” The station officer, P.W. 18, arrived at the scene at approximately 7:30 a.m. and prepared the inquest reports. While the appellant was absent from his own house, he was apprehended by Constable P.W. 13 as he proceeded toward a nearby village called Gonda and was brought back to the crime scene. At the time of his arrest he was wearing a dhoti that was stained with blood; the dhoti was seized and is presented as Exhibit VII.

During interrogation by P.W. 18, the appellant led the officer to his residence, entered a structure described as the “bhusa kothri,” and retrieved three silver ornaments—a taria, a pachhela and a kare—together with a gandasa. He handed these items to the officer; all of them bore bloodstains. The items were forwarded to a serologist for forensic analysis. The serologist reported that the blood on the pachhela had disintegrated and could not be identified, whereas the blood on the taria, kare and gandasa was confirmed to be human blood (see Exhibits P-28, items 100, 101, 102 and 107). Following further investigation, the police filed a charge-sheet against the appellant under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. The trial courts, relying on the circumstantial evidence, concluded that the evidence was sufficient to convict the appellant.

The appellant challenged the correctness of that conclusion on two principal grounds. First, he contended that inadmissible evidence had been admitted, thereby vitiating the finding of guilt. Second, he argued that the trial courts had erred in their directions regarding the appreciation of certain pieces of evidence; he maintained that if those pieces were excluded, the remaining legal evidence would be insufficient to support a conviction. The first ground specifically referred to statements allegedly made by the appellant to his wife, which the prosecution had introduced through the testimony of the wife, identified as P.W. 2.

PW 2 testified that she had awakened in the morning and observed her husband descending from the roof. She said that after coming down, he entered a room identified as the Bhusa Kothri, emerged from that room naked, and then bathed on a platform called the ‘nabdan’. Following the bath, she recounted that he put on the same dhoti he had been wearing before bathing, sat down at home, and told her that he would give her several pieces of jewellery, namely Chail Choori, Lachha, Kara and Zangir. She further stated that she asked him where he had gone around the time referred to as ‘moonhandherey’, and that he replied he had gone to the middle house to fetch “cheez”. The middle house mentioned in her deposition was identified as the residence of a person named Manna. The appellant argued that these statements were communications made to his wife and therefore fell within the protection of Section 122 of the Evidence Act, rendering them inadmissible. He maintained that the trial courts should not have considered this testimony at all.

The appellant also contended that the trial judges erred in treating the fact that the dhoti he wore at the time of his arrest was blood-stained as conclusive proof of his participation in the murder. He argued that for a conviction based solely on circumstantial evidence, the evidence must be of a nature that excludes every reasonable possibility of the accused’s innocence. According to the appellant, the bloodstains on the dhoti could not meet that standard because, when examined under Section 342 of the Criminal Procedure Code, he had explained that he was overwhelmed with grief and had fallen upon his father’s dead body, causing the dhoti to become stained with blood. This explanation, the appellant asserted, was corroborated by PW 2’s testimony and could not be dismissed as improbable. Consequently, the appellant held that the blood-stained dhoti should not have been treated as unequivocal proof of murder and should have been excluded from consideration.

Finally, the appellant argued that the lower courts were mistaken in concluding that his possession and production of the ornaments – the taria, pachhela, kare and other articles – proved that he had committed murder. He maintained that such possession at most raised a presumption that he had either stolen the ornaments or received them knowing they were stolen, which did not necessarily imply that he had taken part in the homicide. The appellant relied on a precedent of this Court in Criminal Appeal No 99 of 1952 (SC) (A), wherein a conviction for murder under Section 302 was set aside because it was based solely on the accused’s possession of a gold ‘kanthi’ and a silver plate belonging to the deceased. In that case, the Supreme Court substituted the murder conviction with a conviction under Section 380 of the Indian Penal Code for theft in a dwelling house, emphasizing that possession of stolen property alone does not automatically lead to a finding of murder.

In considering the issue of theft committed in a dwelling house, the Court first referred to its earlier observations after reviewing the relevant authorities. The Court stated that no strict rule can be laid down as to what inference must be drawn from any particular circumstance. It further explained that where the only evidence against an accused person is the recovery of stolen property, and even if the surrounding facts may suggest that the theft and a murder were carried out at the same time, it would not be safe to conclude that the person who was found in possession of the stolen property was also the murderer. The Court pointed out that the question of whether the accused’s unexplained possession of the articles could be taken as evidence of participation in the murder is a factual issue that must be decided by looking at all the circumstances of the case. In the earlier case cited, the two articles had been produced by the accused on 13-1-1948 and on 18-1-1948, while the deceased had been killed on the night of 31-12-1947 to 1-1-1948, and no other circumstance linked the accused to the murder. Accordingly, the Court said it must examine the facts and circumstances established in the present case to determine whether they are sufficient to attribute guilt of murder to the appellant. First, the evidence of PW 2 was considered. PW 2 testified that on the early morning of 27 May 1952, while it was still dark, the accused was seen coming down from the roof of his house, entering the bhusha kothri, emerging again, taking a bath and then dressing again in a dhoti. The Court held that this observation is admissible because it relates to the acts and conduct of the accused and does not concern any communication made by him to his wife, and therefore it is not excluded under Section 122. Second, the Court noted that among the articles delivered by the accused to PW 18 on the morning of the 27th was a gandasa that bore bloodstains. When questioned under Section 342, the accused denied having handed over the gandasa to PW 18. However, the denial was disproved beyond doubt by the recovery report (Exhibit PV I) and the testimony of PW 12, PW 14 and PW 18. Third, the Court observed that when the ornaments were produced by the appellant on the morning of the 27th they were also covered with bloodstains. This fact distinguishes the present case from Criminal Appeal No 99 of 1952 (SC) (A), where the recovery of stolen items occurred several days after the death and the accused could plausibly be held to have committed theft or received stolen property without having participated in the murder. In the present matter, the appellant had disappeared from his house before 7:30 a.m., and when he was later apprehended and brought back under arrest, he produced the articles from the bhusha kothri. It follows that he must have obtained possession of the articles before he left the

In this case, the Court observed that the inquests were conducted shortly after dawn, unlike the later timing in Criminal Appeal No. 99 of 1952 (SC) (A). Because of this difference, the Court found it difficult to accept the appellant’s argument that he had only acted as a receiver of stolen property. The Court also noted that, during his examination under Section 342, the appellant denied having delivered the articles to plaintiff-witness 18. The Court held that this denial was disproved by Exhibit P-VI and the testimony of plaintiff-witnesses 12, 14 and 18. The Court further pointed out that the jewels recovered from the appellant were stained with blood, and that the appellant had been seen descending from the roof of the house in the early hours of the morning. In addition, a blood-stained gandasa was recovered from the appellant. In the Court’s view, these facts were sufficient to connect the appellant with the offence of murder. The Court added that there was ample evidence showing that the relationship between the appellant and his father was strained, that frequent quarrels had led to a partition of their property, and that the animosity continued thereafter. This evidence was recorded in the testimonies of plaintiff-witnesses 1, 12 and 14 and had been accepted by the lower courts as establishing a motive for the crime. Considering all of these circumstances together, the Court concluded that they were enough to uphold the findings of the lower courts that the appellant had committed murder. Accordingly, the Court confirmed the appellant’s conviction under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and the death sentence imposed on him, and dismissed the appeal.