Sunder Singh 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: 3 November, 1955

Coram: Sinha

In this case, the matter concerned Sunder Singh versus the State of Uttar Pradesh, dated 3 November 1955, and was heard by the Supreme Court of India. The judgment was delivered by Justice Sinha. The appeal reached this Court on the basis of “leave” that had been granted by the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, but the Court observed that the leave did not satisfy the conditions laid down in Article 134(1)(c) of the Constitution. The Court recalled a recent decision in Baladin Lodhi v. State of Uttar Pradesh, where it had drawn the attention of the High Court to the observations made in the reported case of Nar Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh. In that earlier decision, this Court had explained that the power to grant a certificate under Article 134(1)(c) is not exercised automatically; it must be exercised only after the High Court has considered whether the case presents difficult questions of law or principle that warrant the further consideration of this Court. If, on the face of the record, the High Court’s decree does not involve such questions, there is no justification for it to certify the case as fit for appeal. The Court further stressed that the term “certifies” in Sub-article (1)(c) is a strong term that obliges the High Court to scrutinize the case closely for any special considerations. A case that lacks a question of law, even if the factual issues are complex, cannot justify the grant of a certificate, because any doubt concerning the facts in a criminal proceeding must be resolved in favour of the accused. Conversely, if the High Court is certain of the accused’s guilt and confirms the conviction of the trial Court, there is ordinarily no ground to entertain an application for a certificate that the case is suitable for a further appeal. The Court noted that where the High Court reverses an acquittal and imposes a death sentence, or where it assumes original jurisdiction over a case withdrawn from a subordinate court and then convicts and sentences the accused to death, such matters fall respectively within Articles 134(1)(a) and 134(1)(b). Consequently, in an affirming judgment that does not raise a substantial question of law or principle, the High Court would ordinarily be unjustified in granting a certificate under Sub-article (c) of Article 134(1).

The Court then turned to the present appeal and observed that it does not involve any question of law, let alone a question of unusual difficulty or importance. The conviction of the accused by the lower courts was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. The sole issue before the High Court was whether the circumstances disclosed by the evidence unmistakably pointed to the conclusion that the accused was the guilty person. The Court explained that if the High Court had any doubt about the accused’s guilt, or found any difficulty in accepting the evidence, its duty would have been to acquit. Since the High Court found the evidence to be clear, cogent and reliable, it correctly dismissed the appeal. In the Court’s view, the High Court’s order granting leave to appeal to this Court was therefore erroneous, and the certificate, if it may be termed as such, did not fulfil the requirements of Article 134(1)(c) of the Constitution.

The issue before the High Court was whether the material disclosed by the prosecution unmistakably indicated that the accused was the guilty person. The Court held that if any doubt about the accused’s guilt existed, or if the evidence seemed difficult to accept, the Court’s clear duty was to acquit the accused. Conversely, the Court stated that when the evidence was found, as it was in the present case, to be clear, cogent and reliable, the appropriate result was to dismiss the appeal. The Court further explained that once such a finding was reached, no additional question of doubt or difficulty could arise. In the Court’s view, therefore, the order at the end of the judgment, which read, “Leave to appeal to the Supreme Court has been asked for and is allowed,” was erroneous. Consequently, the Court held that the certificate purportedly issued by the High Court did not satisfy the requirements of Article 134(1)(c) of the Constitution. The judgment clarified, however, that this conclusion did not necessarily terminate the appeal. The Court indicated that it must now examine whether, under the circumstances of this case, it could deem it appropriate to grant special leave to appeal pursuant to Article 136(1) of the Constitution, and that the matter would be considered from that perspective.

The factual background of the case is straightforward. The accused, Sunder Singh, was one of several police constables attached to the Director-General of Police, Central Range, Uttar Pradesh, and performed duties as an orderly peon who also drove the official car. He, together with other constables, resided in a six-room out-house attached to the official quarters of the Director-General of Police. The appellant, Het Ram (identified as PW-1), along with Constables Sadhu Ram (PW-6) and Ram Lal, occupied some of these rooms. The appellant and Ram Lal appeared to be on friendly terms; the appellant frequently visited the room occupied by Ram Lal and his wife, while the other constables lived there without their families. According to the prosecution, on the night of 2 February 1954, at approximately 10 p.m., the appellant and Ram Lal left the Director-General’s bungalow on a cycle, with Ram Lal pedalling on the carrier. They rode toward La Martiniere Ground, which lies to the west of the bungalow and is bounded by paved roads on the north and west, and a culvert crossing the east-west road north of the ground. The appellant returned alone at about 1 a.m. on 3 February. The following morning, Constable Jagat Narain of the Armed Guard discovered the dead body of a constable behind the residence of Shri Hukum Singh, the Minister, near La Martiniere Ground, and reported the finding to the Director-General of Police. Het Ram (PW-1) and other residents of the servants’ quarters subsequently went to view the body, which they identified as that of Ram Lal.

After the constable identified the body as that of Ramlal, he observed that the corpse bore multiple incised wounds. Het Ram then lodged a first-information report at 7 : 40 a.m. on 3 February 1954 at the Hazratganj police station in Lucknow. Sub-Inspector Ishtiaq Ahmad, who is identified as PW 16, arrived at the location and began a formal investigation. He conducted an inquest, arranged for the body to be sent for a post-mortem examination, and while conducting his field work he noticed fresh blood marks on the shoes of the appellant, who was present with him at the scene. Acting on this observation, the Sub-Inspector formally arrested the appellant at about 3 p.m. on the same day and placed him under interrogation. In the presence of two rickshaw drivers whom he had detained on the road, the officer seized the appellant’s shoes, prepared a seizure list labeled Ex P-8, and recorded the shoes as Exhibit VIII. Thereafter, accompanied by the appellant and the two witnesses, the Sub-Inspector proceeded to the appellant’s room, which was initially locked; the appellant unlocked the door. Inside the room the officer found a locked box, which the appellant also opened with his own key. From within that box the police recovered a khaki shirt and a pair of khaki trousers, both bearing blood stains and designated as Exhibits IX and X. The officer then took the appellant, together with the two witnesses, to the culvert situated on the road north of the La Martiniere Ground, approximately two hundred paces from the servants’ quarters. Under the culvert the accused pointed out a small sword, locally called a karauli, which was recovered and labeled Exhibit P-XI. The seized items – the blood-stained shoes, shirt, trousers, and the karauli – were forwarded to the forensic laboratory, where the report confirmed the presence of human blood on each article.

The post-mortem examination was conducted by Dr C P Tandon, the Civil Surgeon of Lucknow, who documented a total of thirty-two incised and stab wounds on the deceased, together with a minor abrasion that might have resulted from a fall. The most serious injuries were located on the back of the neck and the back of the head, and the medical report described these as homicidal wounds inflicted by a sharp-edged, sharply pointed weapon. Additional injuries included cuts to several ribs, the pleura, the larynx, the right lung, the pericardium, the major vessels on the left side of the neck, the aorta, the pulmonary artery, and the oesophagus. The stomach contained approximately ten ounces of semi-digested food. Dr Tandon opined that death resulted from shock and haemorrhage caused by the extensive injuries, and he stated that the injuries could have been caused by the weapon shown to him as Exhibit XI. During cross-examination, identified as PW 7, the doctor conceded that the neck wounds could also have been produced by a sword and added that there was a remote possibility that a spear might have caused a stab wound. The lower courts, as noted in the judgment, observed that Ramlal had been brutally butchered and that the medical evidence indicated the murder occurred a few hours after the victim’s night meal on the night of 2 – 3 February 1954, and that the recovered karauli was most likely the instrument that inflicted the multiple stab and incised wounds.

The weapon identified in the trial was said to have been used for inflicting the multiple stab and incised wounds that were discovered on the deceased’s body. At the trial the prosecution presented no direct evidence that personally implicated the appellant; consequently the entire case rested on circumstantial evidence. The Court listed the material circumstances that formed the basis of this evidence. First, it was established that the deceased and the appellant were last seen together riding a bicycle at roughly ten o’clock in the evening on the night of 2 February 1954, heading toward the La Martiniere Ground where the body was found the following morning. Second, it was shown that the appellant returned alone at about one o’clock in the morning on 3 February 1954. Third, the investigating Sub-Inspector seized a pair of shoes that the appellant had been wearing (Exhibit VIII); a serological examination reported that the shoes were stained with human blood. Fourth, a search of the appellant’s room yielded a blood-stained khaki shirt and blood-stained trousers taken from a box that the appellant had unlocked (Exhibits IX and X); these garments were also declared by the serologist to contain human blood. Fifth, the weapon described as a “karauli” was recovered from beneath a culvert on the pucca road north of the La Martiniere Ground, as pointed out by the accused.

All of these incriminating facts were introduced through the testimony of witnesses identified as PW 1, PW 6, PW 10 and PW 15, who were members of the constabulary attached to the personal staff of the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Central Range, together with the investigating Sub-Inspector identified as PW 16. The Court expressed no doubt that the testimony of these constables and armed guards, who bore no personal animosity toward the appellant, was reliable. The Court also concluded that the appellant possessed a motive for murder, the evidence indicating an illicit relationship between him and the wife of the deceased. The High Court had further observed that the most serious injuries – the wounds on the back of the neck – could have been inflicted by a person seated behind the deceased while he was pedalling the cycle. After sustaining those grave injuries, the deceased could have been easily overpowered and killed by the additional wounds found on his body. Accordingly, the lower courts convicted the appellant of murder and imposed the maximum punishment, finding no mitigating circumstances. In the present appeal, counsel for the appellant argued that the seizure of the blood-stained shoes by the Sub-Inspector (PW 16) was questionable because the individuals who purportedly witnessed the seizure, Md Irshad (PW 12) and Abdul Habib (PW 14), were not “respectable inhabitants of the locality in which the place to be searched is situated,” a requirement stipulated by Section 103 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

On a preliminary reading, Section 103 of the Code of Criminal Procedure does not govern the confiscation of the shoes that the accused was wearing when he was encountered by the investigating police officer. Section 103 becomes applicable only when a search is directed at a place, and it does not extend to the searching of a person. In the present incident the Sub-Inspector observed the accused putting on a pair of shoes and, on that observation, seized the footwear. No inquiry was made as to a place or to the interior of the accused’s body, and therefore the situation did not involve a search of either a place or a person. Consequently, the strict requirement of Section 103 for two independent witnesses to a search was not triggered in this circumstance. Nevertheless, the Sub-Inspector, exercising excess caution, invited two rickshaw-wallah individuals to be present because they were readily accessible at the scene. Attempts to secure a witness from the Minister’s quarters failed, and the majority of occupants in the DIG’s servants’ quarters were police constables or members of the armed guard. The Sub-Inspector therefore preferred witnesses who were neither constables nor members of the armed guard, believing that civilian witnesses would be more appropriate. When the room occupied by the appellant was searched and the blood-stained shirt and trousers were recovered, the presence of at least two witnesses was required under Section 103. Even if the two rickshaw-wallahs who actually observed the search were not deemed respectable inhabitants of the locality, that defect would not render the search invalid, only affect the evidential weight. Accordingly, any departure from the precise requirements of Section 103 would not disturb the legality of the proceedings, but would merely influence the assessment of evidence, a matter for the fact-finding courts. The appellant also contended that the malkhana register and the seizure list were written in different inks, suggesting suspicion, yet such questions are again for the courts of fact to resolve. The lower courts examined these particularities and concluded that they did not undermine the credibility of the prosecution witnesses, and therefore the findings on motive and other issues remained intact.

The Court observed that the trial courts had examined the issue concerning the accused’s possible attraction to the deceased’s wife. It was noted that the prosecution had put forward the suggestion that the accused might have been interested in the attractive spouse of the victim and that a relationship with her had already been established. The Court stated that such circumstances could be regarded as a sufficient motive for the heinous offence alleged, and that the determination of whether this motive existed lay within the province of the fact-finding courts. The appellant’s counsel was unable to demonstrate any illegality or serious procedural irregularity that might have resulted in a miscarriage of justice. No justification was offered to disturb the factual conclusions that had been reached concurrently by the lower courts. Consequently, having found no basis to interfere with the factual findings, the Court concluded that the appeal could not be sustained and ordered its dismissal. The judgment further emphasized that where the evidence presented at trial points to a personal motive, it is the responsibility of the trial judge to weigh that evidence and to arrive at a conclusion based on the totality of the material. In the absence of any showing that the trial process was compromised, the appellate court cannot substitute its own view for that of the trial courts. Moreover, the appellate jurisdiction does not extend to re-examining the credibility of witnesses unless a clear error is demonstrated. Accordingly, the appellate court found that the record did not contain any indication of bias, tampering, or procedural defect that would warrant setting aside the lower courts’ findings.