Ram Das vs State Of West Bengal on 24 February, 1954

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

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Not extracted

Decision Date: 24 February, 1954

Coram: Venkatarama Ayyar

The case titled Ram Das versus State of West Bengal, decided on 24 February 1954, was heard before the Supreme Court of India. The judgment was authored by Justice Venkatarama Ayyar. The appellant had been convicted by the First‑Class Magistrate of Hoogly for an offence under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code and was sentenced to two years of rigorous imprisonment. On appeal, the Sessions Judge of Hoogly affirmed both the conviction and the sentence, and a subsequent revision petition to the High Court was dismissed. The matter therefore reached this Court on a special leave petition filed under Article 136 of the Constitution.

The material facts, which are not contested, may be summarised as follows. Smt Parul Bhattacharya, identified as Plaintiff Witness 6, was the wife of C Witness 1, an employee of the Sodepur colliery. After delivering her child, she travelled to Calcutta for confinement and then attempted to rejoin her husband by boarding the Moghalsarai Passenger on 11 September 1951. She was accompanied by a relative, Rabindra Narayan Chakrabarti, identified as Plaintiff Witness 5. Both entered an inter‑class compartment of the train. Another passenger, Jyotsna Das, identified as Plaintiff Witness 9, was travelling on the same train to visit her ailing father in Barakar; she entered the same compartment at Howrah, escorted by Plaintiff Witness 1, a friend of her father. Several other passengers were initially present, but all of them alighted at Panduah, leaving only Witnesses 1, 5, 6 and 9 in the compartment.

The appellant was travelling on the same train but in a separate compartment. He also disembarked at Panduah, citing overcrowding, and transferred into the compartment occupied by Witnesses 1, 5, 6 and 9. After the train resumed motion, a dispute arose between the appellant and the other passengers, which escalated into a scuffle. Plaintiff Witness 1 pulled the alarm chain, causing the train to halt at Boinchi. Police officers arrived at the scene and observed that Plaintiff Witness 6 had alighted on the platform and was weeping. Inside the compartment, the appellant was seen standing with his hands gripping the chains attached to an upper berth while violently kicking the other occupants. The constables who entered the carriage were also kicked, but they managed to extract the appellant from the compartment. Meanwhile, a crowd that had gathered on the platform began to pelt the appellant with shoes and umbrellas until the police took him into protective custody.

The charge framed against the appellant alleged that he assaulted Plaintiff Witness 6, Parul Bhattacharya, with the intention of outraging her modesty. The fact that the appellant assaulted her was established beyond doubt. Plaintiff Witness 6 testified that the accused kicked her, causing injuries to her arm, hand and back. This testimony was corroborated by the statements of Plaintiff Witnesses 1 and 5. Additionally, Plaintiff Witness 2, a medical doctor who examined her shortly after the incident, reported finding scratches on the right forearm above the wrist and a contusion below the right shoulder.

In this matter, the counsel representing the appellant did not put forward a serious challenge to the lower courts’ conclusion that the appellant had assaulted P. W. 6. The only argument advanced was a speculative remark that P. W. 6 might have been standing on the side of P. W. 1 and P. W. 5 during their scuffle with the appellant, and that she could have been struck accidentally by blows that were intended for the other participants. The Court regarded this suggestion as completely gratuitous, noting that it directly contradicted the evidence presented by the prosecution. Consequently, the argument was rejected and the finding of the courts below that the appellant assaulted P. W. 6 was upheld as correct.

The subsequent issue before the Court was whether the assault was carried out with the specific intent to outrage the modesty of P. W. 6, or at least with the knowledge that such outrage would result. After a careful review of the entire evidentiary record, the Court was not satisfied that this element had been proved beyond reasonable doubt. The most serious allegation on this point was that the appellant had forcibly pressed the two women against his chest. The First Information Report, filed by P. W. 5, claimed that the appellant, “in his naked condition clasped both of them on to his breast.” However, the testimony presented did not support this description. P. W. 1 recounted that the two women, frightened by the appellant’s behavior, moved down to the compartment floor for safety, after which the appellant seized them and embraced them. P. W. 5 also testified that the appellant caught hold of both ladies and that they subsequently went down to the floor; yet in her primary examination she said nothing about any embracing, and only during cross‑examination did she state that the appellant had embraced the two women from behind. Similarly, P. W. 6 testified that she and P. W. 9 had gone down to the floor out of fear and had shouted; she did not mention being embraced in her direct evidence, adding that detail only during cross‑examination. P. W. 9 observed that the appellant was able to catch P. W. 6 but that she herself was not caught, and she offered no comment on any embracing of P. W. 6. In light of these inconsistent and incomplete statements, the Court found it difficult to conclude that the alleged embracing was established beyond doubt. Moreover, while P. W. 1, P. W. 5 and P. W. 6 reported that the appellant first removed his coat and belt, placed them on an upper berth, and then removed his trousers becoming “practically naked,” both P. W. 1 and P. W. 6 admitted that he retained his under‑garments, suggesting that the removal of trousers may have been intended simply to lie down. No logical inference could therefore be drawn that the appellant’s purpose was to outrage the modesty of the women. The Court thus considered that the First Information Report presented an exaggerated version of events. It was also noted that the report alleged the appellant stared at the ladies “with lustful eyes,” an impression the Court regarded as more psychological than factual.

The court observed that the description of the appellant looking at the women “with lustful eyes” seemed to be a psychological impression rather than a factual finding. The court emphasized that an allegation of attempting to outrage the modesty of two women in the presence of two gentlemen was highly unnatural and therefore required clear and beyond‑reasonable‑doubt evidence before it could be accepted. According to the testimony, the appellant had traveled from Calcutta in a crowded compartment and then transferred to a compartment that contained only four passengers in order to obtain a sleeping berth. Finding the three lower berths already occupied, he tried to force his way onto the seat where the first witness lay with her infant. The first witness resisted, and in the process the appellant assaulted her. Her cries attracted the attention of the second witness, who descended from his upper berth, and together with the third witness they confronted the appellant, resulting in a scuffle. The ninth witness testified that while she was asleep she was awakened by the noise of the altercation, joined the first witness, and both fled to the floor of the compartment below the berth for safety. The appellant, feeling attacked by the second and third witnesses, is said to have gripped the two chains that supported the upper berth with his arms and kicked his assailants. This chaotic scene was observed by the police officers after the alarm chain was pulled and the train stopped at Boinchi. To the extent that the events could be reconstructed, the court found that this was the sequence that had occurred.

The court concluded that, on the basis of this reconstruction, the appellant could not be convicted under Section 354 because his conduct was motivated by a desire to secure a berth rather than an intention to outrage the modesty of the first witness. The facts proved did not support an inference that the appellant acted with the purpose of violating her modesty. The lower courts, the court noted, had not examined this issue from the perspective of the appellant’s intent; instead, they had assumed that the presence of an assault automatically meant a violation of Section 354, without considering whether the assault fell within that provision. The appellant’s cross‑examination had sought to undermine the credibility of the other witnesses by suggesting that the second and third witnesses were not honest companions of the first and ninth witnesses and were merely having a “merry time” with them, an allegation the court found both unfounded and irrelevant. The lower courts appeared to have been unduly influenced by the appellant’s argument that any proven assault must be treated as an offence under Section 354. Consequently, the court held that although the appellant was guilty of assault, the conviction under Section 354 was not sustainable.

In that view, the trial court dismissed the inconsistencies as being of minor significance. Before the Supreme Court, counsel for the appellant did not repeat that suggestion. Instead, he relied upon the accused’s statement made under Section 342, in which the accused said that when he entered the compartment he was abused by the other passengers in a language he could not understand and that he was assaulted. The statement made no allegation that any improper relationship existed between Witness 1 and Witness 9 or between Witness 5 and Witness 6. After considering the evidence, the Court concluded that, although the appellant unquestionably assaulted Witness 6, the prosecution had not proved that he acted with the intention of outraging her modesty or that he knew his conduct would outrage her. Consequently, the Court acquitted the appellant of the charge under Section 354 and substituted a conviction under Section 352 for assault. Turning to sentencing, the Court noted that the appellant held a position as a railway officer of some standing, which imposed a duty to treat passengers fairly and courteously. His conduct, which involved forcibly attempting to take the seat occupied by Witness 6 and her child and assaulting her when she resisted, merited censure, and he further aggravated the matter by casting aspersions on the character of Witness 6 and Witness 9. In light of these circumstances, the Court imposed the maximum punishment authorized under Section 352, sentencing the appellant to three months of rigorous imprisonment. The appeal was therefore allowed in these respects. It was submitted that the appellant had already served approximately eight months of the two‑year rigorous imprisonment ordered by the lower courts before he was released on bail by this Court. Accordingly, there was no need to return him to custody, and the only remaining order was to cancel the bail bond that had been posted.