Pershadi 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 September, 1956

Coram: Imam, J.

The case titled Pershadi versus State of Uttar Pradesh was decided on 25 September 1956 by the Supreme Court of India. The judgment was authored by Justice S K Das, who sat alone on the bench. The appellant had earlier been sentenced to transportation for life by the Temporary Sessions Judge of Aligarh on the ground that he had committed the murder of a six‑year‑old boy named Chimmanlal. The appellant challenged that conviction before the Allahabad High Court, where his appeal was initially heard by two judges, Desai J and Mehrotra J. The two judges expressed a divergent view: Desai J concluded that the appellant was guilty of the offence of murder, whereas Mehrotra J held that the appellant was not guilty. Because of this disagreement, the matter was referred to a third judge of the High Court, Agarwala J. Agarwala J concurred with Desai J, finding the appellant guilty, and consequently upheld the conviction and dismissed the appeal. The High Court thereafter certified the matter as a fit case for appeal to this Court, and the appeal was subsequently taken up before the Supreme Court.

The factual narrative recorded that the alleged murder took place on or about 2 December 1950. On that afternoon the child, Chimmanlal, left his father’s shop at approximately five o’clock in the evening to walk the short distance home, but he never arrived. His father, Shanker Lal, returned home at about six o’clock, discovered that the boy was missing, and began an immediate search for him. During the search Shanker Lal questioned the appellant, whose reply was later described as material, a point that the Court indicated would be examined subsequently. The following morning, at roughly nine o’clock, Shanker Lal filed a missing‑person report at the Police Station in Hathras, making no reference to any individual as a suspected perpetrator. On 9 December 1950, a villager named Gian Chand, who resided in the adjacent village of Jogia, went to his well to repair a Persian wheel and noticed a foul odour emanating from the well. Upon inspection he discovered a corpse floating in the water. He informed the watchman, Lohrey Chowkidar, and a report was promptly sent to the police station. Police officers arrived, recovered the body, and observed that it was clothed only in a single black pyjama. Shanker Lal’s father, Puran Mal, was summoned and identified the remains as those of Chimmanlal; subsequently, Shanker Lal also identified the body at the police station as his son’s. The corpse was considerably decomposed, exhibited no visible injuries, and the attending medical officer could not render an opinion on the cause of death because of the advanced state of decay. On 11 December 1950 the appellant was arrested. When he was being escorted to the police station, he told the police that he could produce the clothing of the deceased child. He then led the officers to the top of a brick‑kiln, removed earth from a pit, and retrieved garments that were subsequently positively identified as belonging to the dead Chimmanlal.

Agarwala J. examined the material before him and concluded that the appellant was guilty of murder. He identified five distinct circumstances. First, the appellant possessed a motive to commit the killing. Second, the appellant had threatened the deceased’s father, Shanker Lal, indicating that he would take revenge against him. Third, the appellant had both access to the deceased and the ability to persuade him to accompany him, thereby creating the opportunity to kill him. Fourth, the appellant delivered the deceased’s clothing to the police, an act that linked him directly to the body. Fifth, the appellant denied several material facts that had already been conclusively established, thereby casting further doubt on his credibility. Agarwala J. held that none of these points, taken individually, was sufficient to prove the appellant’s guilt. However, when considered together, the cumulative effect of the motive, the threat, the opportunity, the handling of the clothing, and the false denials led to an unavoidable inference that the appellant had removed the deceased’s clothes, was aware of the murder, and concealed the clothing at the top of the brick‑kiln.

The Court then turned to the procedural objection raised by the State, which contended that the appeal was not maintainable because the High Court had issued a defective certificate of fitness to appeal. The State cited earlier decisions of this Court in which certificates had been held defective under similar circumstances. On examination of the record, it appeared that after the third Judge delivered his opinion, the trial Court proceeded to dismiss the appeal, and at that moment an oral application was made for a certificate permitting appeal to this Court. The High Court may have incorporated that application into its order, treating the points raised in the appeal as sufficient grounds for granting the certificate. Nevertheless, even assuming that the certificate was defective, this Court retains the power to grant special leave to appeal. Considering the facts and the circumstances of the present case, the Court concluded that special leave would have been granted had the appellant applied for it, and therefore the Court granted special leave on the assumption that the certificate was indeed defective.

Having resolved the procedural issue, the Court proceeded to assess whether the circumstantial evidence was adequate to support a conviction for murder. It was necessary to set out certain factual background concerning the appellant’s motive and the alleged threat of revenge against Shanker Lal. The appellant, a resident of the village Ramanpur, was employed in Shanker Lal’s Halwai shop at Hathras. The Court noted that establishing the appellant’s motive and his threat to take revenge formed an essential part of the inquiry into whether the appellant was responsible for the deceased’s death.

The appellant was a resident of Ramanpur, a village situated not far from the town of Hathras. In Hathras, Shanker Lal, who was the father of the deceased child, operated a Halwai shop, and the appellant was employed in the service of Shanker Lal. A theft occurred in the Halwai shop, and a report of that theft was lodged with the police station on 1‑11‑1950. The police report implicated both the appellant and a person named Charna. Consequently, both individuals were arrested. Charna was committed to jail, whereas the appellant was placed in a lock‑up and subsequently released after furnishing security. On the following day, the appellant disclosed the location where the stolen safe of Shanker Lal had been hidden, enabling Shanker Lal to recover his stolen property. While confined in the lock‑up, the appellant told two witnesses, Ramnath (identified as PW 6) and Jawala Prasad (identified as PW 10), that he would take revenge on Shanker Lal when he was released from jail. After his release, the appellant reiterated the same threat in the presence of another witness, Zahar Mal (identified as PW 4). In the theft case, both the appellant and Charna were eventually convicted in 1951 under Section 381 of the Indian Penal Code. The trial courts accepted the evidence of the appellant’s threat without reservation, and there is no reason to doubt that the evidence concerning the threat was properly considered and rightly admitted by the lower courts. The defence argued that the threat was directed solely at Shanker Lal and that, even if it provided a motive to commit an offence against Shanker Lal, it did not explain a motive to murder Shanker Lal’s son, Chimmanlal. The Court rejected this argument, holding that the threat was expressly to take revenge on Shanker Lal, and that the manner of such revenge was not specified. The Court observed that it would be difficult to imagine a more effective form of revenge against Shanker Lal than killing his young son. Accordingly, the Court was satisfied that a motive existed for the appellant to commit the murder and that the threat, as recounted by the prosecution witnesses, was genuine.

Regarding the appellant’s access to the deceased, the record contains no evidence that the appellant was seen in the company of the child on the day the child disappeared or in the hours immediately preceding the disappearance. Likewise, there is no evidence that the child was last observed alive while accompanied by the appellant. Nevertheless, because the deceased was a child and the appellant had previously served as a servant to the child’s father, the Court noted that it was not implausible that the appellant might have induced the child to accompany him when an opportunity presented itself, although the Court cautioned against placing excessive emphasis on this speculative possibility. The fourth circumstance examined by the Court concerned the fact that the appellant handed over the deceased’s clothes to the police, which the Court regarded as a highly significant point. The Sub‑Inspector testified that the appellant had claimed he would surrender the clothes of Chimmanlal, which he said he had placed in a pit above a brick‑kiln, and that the appellant, in the presence of witnesses, later excavated the pit and retrieved the garments. The clothing items identified—comprising a woollen khaki kurta, a Jawahar‑style checkered design garment, a sleeveless sweater, a full‑sleeved white sweater, and a white vest—were established by reliable evidence to belong to the deceased.

The Sub‑Inspector testified that the appellant had told him he would hand over the clothes of the deceased, which he had placed in a pit situated above a brick‑kiln. The Sub‑Inspector further recounted that, in the presence of witnesses, the appellant proceeded to dig the pit at the brick‑kiln and retrieved the clothing items. The clothing recovered were marked as Exhibits 1 through 5 and consisted of a woollen khaki kurta, a Jawahar‑cut check‑pattern garment, a sleeveless sweater, a full‑sleeved white sweater and a white vest. These items were subsequently identified by reliable evidence as belonging to the deceased child. Judge Agarwala expressed doubt about the proof of the appellant’s statement because none of the other witnesses corroborated it, and therefore he suggested that the claim that the appellant had told the police about placing the clothes in the pit above the brick‑kiln was not established. Nevertheless, the Court considered the issue of admissibility of the appellant’s statement to the police and held that the statement was admissible. The Court relied on the decision of the Privy Council in Pulukuri Kottaya v. Emperor, reported in I.L.R. 1948 Mad. 1, where Sir John Beaumont, delivering the judgment, reproduced the full statement of accused No. 6 to the police and ruled that the entire statement, except for the passage “I hid it (a spear) and my stick in the rick of Venkatanarasu in the village. I will show if you come,” was inadmissible. In other words, the specific admission concerning the hidden spear and stick was allowed as evidence.

The Court then quoted Sir John Beaumont’s observation that it is erroneous to treat the “fact discovered” under the relevant provision as synonymous with the object produced; the fact discovered includes the place from which the object was obtained and the accused’s knowledge of that place, and the information must relate directly to that fact. Information about the prior use or history of the object is not relevant to its discovery. Beaumont illustrated this by noting that a statement such as “I will produce a knife concealed in the roof of my house” does not lead to the discovery of a knife, because knives may have been found long ago; rather, it leads to the discovery of the fact that a knife is concealed in the informant’s house, which is highly relevant if the knife is connected with the offence. Applying this principle, the Court found no reason to distrust the Sub‑Inspector’s testimony regarding the appellant’s statement. An examination of the Sub‑Inspector’s evidence revealed no circumstance that would justify concluding that he was untruthful. Moreover, when the body of the deceased was recovered from the well, it was found wearing only a single black pyjama. It was deemed unlikely that, in the month of December, a small child would be clothed solely in a pyjama, especially when warm garments would normally be worn. This observation further supported the inference that the appellant’s retrieval of the child’s additional clothing was significant.

It was observed that the person who caused the death had removed every article of clothing from the body except the pyjama, apparently either to prevent later identification, to obtain a profit, or for both reasons. The appellant contended that the recovery of the deceased’s clothes at his request could demonstrate that he was concealing evidence of murder, but he argued that this fact alone was not sufficiently incriminating to prove that he was the murderer or that he had participated in the killing. It was further suggested that an individual named Charna might have been responsible for the murder because Charna had also been prosecuted by Shanker Lal for theft. Another suggestion was advanced that the appellant’s father might have taken part in the murder and that the appellant merely knew the location where the deceased’s clothes had been hidden. This line of speculation regarding the father was unprecedented; there was no material in the record that could even remotely support the involvement of the appellant’s father. Regarding Charna, the judgment of Agarwala J. provided satisfactory reasons for rejecting that suggestion. In light of the appellant’s own admission that he had hidden the clothes, the proposition that Charna was the murderer could not be sustained. The brick‑kiln where the clothing was discovered was situated in the village of Jogia, which is adjacent to the appellant’s village, and the latter village lies only eight furlongs from Hathras, the place where the deceased resided. The fact that the appellant concealed the deceased’s garments clearly demonstrated his guilty knowledge and was consistent only with him having perpetrated the murder. Concerning the fifth circumstance, the appellant’s categorical denial that he had ever been employed by Shanker Lal, that Shanker Lal had implicated him in the theft case, that he knew the deceased, and that he had indicated the location of the deceased’s clothes at the top of the brick‑kiln, was a conduct inconsistent with a claim of innocence. These denials appeared to be an attempt to repudiate any connection with Shanker Lal, with the deceased, and with the clothing. Consequently, a court would be justified in drawing an adverse inference against the appellant under the circumstances. It was also noted that, during the cross‑examination of Shanker Lal, he was asked whether he had visited the appellant’s house on the night the deceased went missing, prior to lodging his report at the police station, and he affirmed that he had. He was then asked whether he had asked the appellant if he had removed the deceased; he again answered affirmatively and recounted that the appellant had told him, “I have thrown him in the Bhaar (furnace).” The lower courts were reluctant to treat this statement as incriminating because it was made in a moment of anger.

The Court observed that the appellant's statement to Shanker Lal was undeniably made, and even if it was uttered in a moment of anger, it possessed considerable significance for the matter before the Court. The Court explained that the content of the statement amounted to the appellant informing Shanker Lal that he had eliminated the deceased and had thereby executed the threat he had previously made. The Court noted that, although the corpse of the deceased was ultimately recovered from a well rather than from a furnace, this factual detail did not diminish the importance of the appellant’s declaration. What the Court found crucial was that, shortly after the disappearance of the deceased was discovered, the appellant had voluntarily said that he had taken part in the disappearance by throwing the victim into a furnace. The Court then turned to the circumstantial evidence presented throughout the trial. After reviewing that evidence, the Court held that the totality of the circumstances aligned solely with the guilt of the accused and could not be reconciled with any alternative rational explanation. Consequently, the Court concluded that the only reasonable inference from the proven facts was that the appellant was the perpetrator of the murder. On that basis, the Court affirmed that the conviction was proper and accordingly dismissed the appeal.