Gurcharan Singh and Anr. vs State of Punjab

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

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Not extracted

Decision Date: 2 November 1955

Coram: Sinha, J.

In this case the Supreme Court heard an appeal filed by special leave on behalf of two brothers, Gurcharan Singh and Jagir Singh. Both brothers had been found guilty of murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and had been sentenced to transportation for life by the Second Additional Sessions Judge of Ferozepore. The convictions and the sentences were affirmed by a Division Bench of the Punjab High Court in a judgment dated 30-6-1954. During the trial the petitioners were prosecuted together with two other accused persons named Harnek Singh and Munshi. All four individuals were originally convicted and sentenced by the learned Sessions Judge. However, when the matter was taken to the High Court, that Court granted the benefit of doubt to Harnek Singh and Munshi and acquitted them, leaving only Gurcharan Singh and Jagir Singh convicted and sentenced.

The prosecution case, as summarised, stated that on 2-9-1953 the two petitioners, together with the other two accused who were later acquitted, left their village of Sanghu Dhawan armed with large cutting implements known as “gandasas” and were observed moving toward the town of Muktsar, which lay about three miles away. Shortly thereafter, a man named Inder Singh, accompanied by his son Gurnam Singh (identified as PW 2) and by Mohinder Singh (identified as PW 4), also of the same village, set out for Muktsar to purchase chemical manure under a permit issued by the agriculture department. Inder Singh walked ahead while his two companions followed at a short distance. When Inder Singh reached a bridge on the road to Muktsar, approximately one mile from the village, the four accused who had been lying in ambush in a neighbouring bajra field emerged from the field and attacked him. Gurcharan Singh, the first appellant, delivered the first blow with a gandasa to Inder Singh’s head. He was followed by Jagir Singh, who struck Inder Singh’s leg with additional gandasa blows. As a result Inder Singh fell down and the four accused continued to strike him, inflicting a total of twenty-seven injuries on his body. The two companions, Gurnam Singh and Mohinder Singh, raised an alarm but were unable to intervene because they were unarmed. According to the prosecution witnesses, while Inder Singh was still alive, Jagir Singh chopped off the victim’s head just above the lower jaw and wrapped the head together with the turban in the deceased’s chaddar. Two other witnesses, Raman Singh and Hari Singh (identified as PW 6 and PW 7), who were returning from Muktsar, testified that they saw the four accused fleeing with the head wrapped in a piece of cloth. Gurnam Singh (PW 2) hurried to the police station and lodged the first information report at 5 P.M. on the same afternoon, the place of occurrence being noted as a mile and

In this case the police station was located a mile and a half towards the east of the place where the alleged offence occurred. The report does not give an exact clock-time for the incident, only stating that it happened in the afternoon. The first information report filed after the incident named all four accused persons and alleged that they had conspired to kill Inder Singh. The version of the prosecution recorded in that report is essentially the same as the narrative previously described. Regarding motive, the report states that the four accused believed that the victim’s father had supplied secret information to the authorities that was unfavorable to them. At trial, two witnesses identified as Gurnam Singh (PW-2) and Mohinder Singh (PW-4) gave oral testimony describing the whole sequence of events as eye-witnesses from its beginning to its conclusion. Two additional witnesses, Raman Singh (PW-6) and Hari Singh (PW-7), testified only to the latter portion of the prosecution’s case; they said they heard an alarm from a distance of roughly one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards and then saw the four accused armed with large knives called “gandasas” and observed Jagir Singh wrapping the victim’s head in a piece of cloth. The appellants pleaded not guilty and argued that they were not involved in the incident. They further asserted that any implication of them arose because they had a hostile relationship with the family of the deceased. The principal accused, Jagir Singh, advanced an alibi defence, which he set out in his own words in a statement made under Section 342 of the Criminal Procedure Code before the magistrate conducting the inquiry. In that statement he claimed to be a member of the Sanghu Dhawan panchayat, to have traveled with other panchayat members to Muktsar on the day of the incident, to have attended an oath-taking ceremony attended by the Chief Minister at eight o’clock in the morning, and to have left Muktsar after the ceremony at approximately two-thirty in the afternoon. He further recounted that after leaving Muktsar he sought shelter at a local cinema when rain began, that Head Constable Gurbux Singh and Sadhu Singh of Chak Bir Sarkar met him there, that he remained there for about one and a half hours, and that he later proceeded to his village when the rain stopped, accompanied by several other panchayat members. He said that while in the village he was approached by Nar Singh, another panchayat member, who informed him that a man’s father had been killed by an unknown person, and that shortly thereafter S. Bhag Singh, the Member of Legislative Assembly from Bir Sarkar, met them and they all returned to the village, after which he maintained his innocence. The learned counsel for the appellants urged the Court to consider this alibi defence, describing it as a bold claim that had been raised early in the inquiry and could be readily checked against official records. The prosecution evidence also confirmed that a public function had taken place in the forenoon of the day of the incident, attended by the Chief Minister, during which the panchayat members took their oath of office.

According to the evidence, the ceremony at which the members of the Panchayat took their oath of office concluded at approximately 12:30 p.m. The appellant Jagir Singh asserted an alibi, claiming that he had been present at that ceremony, which he said ended at about 2:30 p.m. The court noted that the responsibility for proving such an alibi rested entirely on Jagir Singh. Although his counsel described the defence as “bold,” the law required the accused to establish the facts on which it relied. The record showed that Jagir Singh did not produce any oral or documentary evidence to demonstrate that he had indeed attended the ceremony and that it had lasted until the time he alleged. The court further observed that, had Jagir Singh successfully proved the alibi, he would have been entitled to an acquittal because the crime could not have been committed later than 2:30 p.m. notwithstanding the uncertainty of the exact moment of the occurrence. However, the evidence indicated that the incident took place at about 3 p.m. Because the special defence of alibi had not been substantiated, the court held that Jagir Singh’s situation was the same as that of the other appellant, and no acquittal could be granted on that basis.

The prosecution, irrespective of any defence raised, bore the burden of proving the guilt of the accused. The prosecution’s case rested on the testimony of four witnesses: P.W. 2 and P.W. 4, who had accompanied the deceased from the village to Muktsar, and P.W. 6 and P.W. 7, who were returning from Muktsar and became aware of the incident when two other witnesses raised an alarm. The lower courts had examined the statements of these four witnesses in detail and had found them reliable, even though Gurnam Singh (P.W. 2), Raman Singh (P.W. 6) and Hari Singh (P.W. 7) were close relatives of the deceased. Consequently, the courts concluded that there was no question of law requiring interference, and the special appeal did not disclose any grounds for overturning the convictions. Nonetheless, counsel for the appellants argued vehemently that the High Court had ignored the testimony of these four witnesses when it acquitted two of the four accused, namely Harnek Singh and Munshi. The High Court’s reasoning for the acquittal was summarized as follows: “In regard to the complicity of Harnek Singh and Munshi, I have some doubt and I think that they must be given the benefit of the doubt. Neither Harnek Singh nor Munshi had any motive to murder Inder Singh. In the first information report definite part was assigned to Harnek Singh and Munshi inasmuch as it was said that Harnek Singh and Munshi inflicted gandasa blows from right side while Inder Singh was lying down and cut off major portion of his head.” This quotation reflected the High Court’s view that, despite the statements in the police report, the evidence did not conclusively link Harnek Singh and Munshi to the fatal injuries, leading the court to grant them the benefit of the doubt.

In the trial, Gurnam Singh, who had drawn up the first information report, testified that the allegation that Harnek Singh and Munshi had severed the head of the deceased was inaccurate. The prosecution’s fourth witness, Mohinder Singh, stated that it was Jagir Singh who had chopped off the head of Inder Singh, and no specific injuries were attributed to either Harnek Singh or Munshi. The sixth and seventh prosecution witnesses, Raman Singh and Hari Singh respectively, recounted that they observed the four accused standing at a distance of roughly sixty to seventy karams from the body of Inder Singh and that the accused were in possession of gandasas. Raman Singh additionally reported that the four men walked away towards Ude Karan. The Court observed that the testimony of Raman Singh and Hari Singh did not, in its view, necessarily establish a direct link between Harnek Singh, Munshi, and the commission of the murder.

The appellants relied on a recent, unreported decision of this Court dated 13 September 1955 in Mohinder Singh v. State of Punjab. In that earlier case, two persons had been tried for murder and convicted by the trial court. On appeal, the High Court acquitted one of the accused, granting him the benefit of the doubt, while upholding the conviction and death sentence of the other. This Court observed that the positive evidence against the convicted individual was not stronger or materially different from the evidence presented against the acquitted individual. Moreover, the Court noted imperfections in the direct testimony: the principal witness who had initially formulated the theory of the accused’s complicity was described as being “almost blind,” unable to see clearly during the night, and subsequent witnesses who arrived at the scene had readily adopted his opinion that the condemned person was responsible for the lethal assault. Consequently, the Court concluded that reasonable doubt existed regarding the reliability of the oral evidence and therefore the benefit of the doubt had to be given to the accused.

The present matter was compared, for illustrative purposes, with the earlier reported case of Dalip Singh v. State of Punjab. The Court indicated that, similar to the findings in that case, the acquittal of the two other accused by the High Court might not have been entirely correct. However, the reference to that case was intended solely as an illustration and not as a binding precedent, since each case possesses its own unique factual matrix. The Court cautioned that reliance on precedent in matters of fact is inherently risky, as no two cases are identical in their circumstances.

In the matter before this Court, it was argued on behalf of the appellants that two of the four persons charged had been acquitted, although the direct testimony presented against those two was essentially the same as the testimony presented against the appellants. The argument further asserted that the acquittal of the other two accused by the High Court could not, as a matter of law, compel the automatic acquittal of the appellants. The High Court, however, distinguished the appellants from the two individuals it had discharged on the ground that evidence of motive existed against the appellants, whereas no comparable motive evidence was found against the persons it had acquitted. Regarding motive, the trial court had held that the prosecution had failed to establish that the deceased, Inder Singh, had supplied information to the police which led to the recovery of a pistol from Gurcharan Singh, the first appellant, and thereby to his conviction under the Arms Act. The only established fact was that Mohan Singh, identified as PW 8 and brother of the deceased, had testified against the accused in the Arms Act proceeding. If this testimony represented the sole source of animosity between the two families, the appellants could plausibly claim a greater grievance against Mohan Singh himself. Nevertheless, this Court has repeatedly emphasized that when the positive evidence against the accused is clear, cogent and reliable, the presence or absence of motive becomes irrelevant. On the issue of who delivered the fatal blows, the prosecution evidence indicated that after Inder Singh was struck by the two appellants and fell, all four accused subsequently delivered gandasa blows to the fallen man. The present Court is not concerned with the factual matrix surrounding the two individuals who were acquitted by the High Court; the focus remains on the appellants. In that regard, the testimony of the four eyewitnesses mentioned earlier is consistent, remained unaltered under cross-examination and formed the basis of the findings of the lower courts. No sufficient reason has emerged to disturb that finding. It is acknowledged that three of the four witnesses are close relatives of the deceased, yet this Court has consistently held that such a relationship does not invalidate testimony if the witnesses are competent, were situated near the scene and were capable of observing the events that occurred that afternoon. Consequently, the Court sees no merit in addressing the additional arguments raised here concerning the probabilities of the case, as those matters are factual questions already examined and discussed by the courts below. In the Court’s opinion, no grounds exist for interference with the judgments of the lower tribunals, and consequently the appeal is dismissed.