Bhagwan Das vs The State Of Rajasthan

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

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Criminal Appeal No. 50 of 1957

Decision Date: 2 April 1957

Coram: J.L. Kapur, Natwarlal H. Bhagwati

Bhagwan Das versus The State of Rajasthan was decided on 2 April 1957 by the Supreme Court of India. The judgment was authored by Justice J L Kapur, who sat on a bench together with Justice Natwarlal H Bhagwati. The petitioner in the case was Bhagwan Das and the respondent was the State of Rajasthan. The official citation for the decision is 1957 AIR 589 and 1957 SCR 854. The case concerned the circumstances under which a High Court may interfere with an acquittal, the evidential value of a dying declaration, the use of expert evidence, and the proper method of discrediting expert testimony by reference to textbooks. The headnote of the judgment states that a High Court should not overturn an acquittal unless there are “substantial and compelling” reasons for doing so, following the principles laid down in Surajpal Singh v State (1952 SCR 193), Ajmer Singh v State of Punjab (1953 SCR 418) and Aher Raja Khima v State of Saurashtra (1955 2 SCR 1285). It also observes that it is not satisfactory to discredit an expert witness merely by citing textbook passages unless those passages are put to the witness for answer, a view supported by Sunderlal v State of Madhya Pradesh (1954 AIR SC 28). Although the Supreme Court ordinarily will not disturb a High Court’s findings where the courts reach differing conclusions on the evidence of guilt or innocence, the Court will set aside a conviction if the evidence is such that no tribunal could honestly infer the accused’s guilt, relying on Stephen Seneviratne v The King (1936 AIR PC 289).

The matter arose from Criminal Appeal No 50 of 1957, which was taken by special leave from the judgment and order dated 27 January 1956 of the Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur in Criminal Appeal No 119 of 1954. That High Court decision in turn arose from the judgment and order dated 23 March 1954 of the Sessions Judge at Ganganagar in Original Criminal Case No 74 of 1953. The appellant was represented by counsel, while the respondent was represented by two other counsel. The factual background recorded that Bhagwandas and his brother Netram, together with their sister Rameshwari, were tried by the Sessions Judge of Ganganagar for an offence punishable under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. The Sessions Court acquitted all three of them. On appeal, the Rajasthan High Court reversed the acquittals of Bhagwandas and Netram, convicted them under section 302 read with section 34 and sentenced each to transportation for life, while it affirmed the acquittal of Rameshwari. The convicted brothers obtained special leave to appeal to the Supreme Court under article 136 of the Constitution. Their appeal was based on two grounds: first, that the evidence against them was insufficient to justify a conviction; and second, that there were no compelling reasons to set aside the original acquittal. According to the prosecution, the canal after a temporary closure restarted flowing on May …

On May 5 1953 the canal water flow was restored after a temporary closure, and although it was not his allotted turn, the deceased Shivlal was permitted to draw water for irrigating his fields. The following day, May 6, the canal was flowing at full capacity and Shivlal’s turn was scheduled for six hours from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. He began drawing water at 8 a.m. but stopped at 10:30 a.m. because the village pond, known as the diggi, was empty and needed to be filled. With Shivlal’s consent, Mirab Ram Karan, a witness, diverted the water to fill the diggi, promising Shivlal that the remaining three and a half hours of his turn would be provided after the pond was filled. The diggi was completely filled by 1 p.m. on May 7, and Shivlal attempted to redirect the water to his own field. At that moment Bhagwandas intervened, claiming the turn for himself. According to the testimony of Ram Karan, Bhagwandas’s turn followed that of Surta, whose turn was next after Shivlal’s. Because Shivlal was prevented from accessing his water, he walked toward the village intending to speak with Mirab. Bhagwandas shouted “the enemy is going” and struck Shivlal on the head with a kassi. Subsequently Netram hit Shivlal with a lathi, causing him to fall, and both assailants continued beating him; it was alleged that Mt. Rameshwari also participated in the assault using the wooden handle of a kassi. This violent episode was witnessed by Hazari, who was grazing his camels in Surta’s field. Hazari approached the scene, shouted at the attackers, and they dispersed, leaving their kassi behind. He found Shivlal severely injured and unconscious, sprinkled water on Shivlal’s face, which revived him, and Shivlal asked Hazari to take him to the police station. Instead, Hazari assisted Shivlal in walking to the nearby threshing floor, known as the Khala of Hukma. Hazari later testified that he left Shivlal in the care of Jora, Jagmal, Bhogar, Begaram, and Binja, and after they requested an account of the incident, Hazari explained what he had observed. Subsequently Bhaggu and Jagmal transported Shivlal on a she‑camel to the shop of Gyani Ram, another witness. At Gyani Ram’s shop Shivlal reiterated that Bhagwandas, Netram, and Rameshwari had assaulted him over the water dispute, and he asked Gyani Ram to summon his son Ram Pratap and his commission agent Ishardas. Ram Pratap arrived at about 6 p.m.; Shivlal again narrated the incident before being taken to the hospital by Jagmal, Bhaggu and others. At the hospital he received treatment from Dr. P. W. II but died the following morning, May 8, at 8:15 a.m.

In this case the information report was prepared on the basis of a written statement identified as Exhibit P‑1, which was given by Ram Pratap, the son of the deceased Shivlal, and was recorded on May 7 at about 7:30 p.m. The prosecution’s case rested on three principal categories of evidence: the testimony of two eye‑witnesses, several dying declarations made by Shivlal to three different persons, and the recovery of the weapon known as the kassi. The two eye‑witnesses produced were Begaram (identified as PW 2) and Hazari (identified as PW 3). The dying declarations were said to have been made first to Jora (PW 7), subsequently to Gyaniram (PW 4) while he was at his shop, and finally to Ram Pratap (PW 5), who arrived at the shop at 6 p.m.; consequently, if the declaration was addressed to Ram Pratap it must have been recorded at that time. Medical evidence presented by the doctor indicated that Shivlal was unconscious when he was taken to the hospital at 5 p.m. The doctor observed fifteen injuries on his body, noting that injury 1 was inflicted by a sharp‑edged weapon and injury 2 by a blunt weapon; both injuries were described as grievous and, taken together, sufficient to cause death. The learned Sessions Judge found the entire prosecution evidence to be doubtful and consequently acquitted the accused, holding that the evidence was not free from suspicion and was insufficient for a conviction. Both the Sessions Judge and the High Court dismissed the testimony of Begaram. The Sessions Judge characterized Hazari as “a facile fluent liar,” yet the High Court accepted Hazari’s testimony. Statements of Ram Pratap were rejected by both courts, while the High Court accepted the statements of Gyaniram and Jora, although the Sessions Judge had rejected them. The High Court therefore relied on Hazari’s eye‑witness account and on the two witnesses before whom Shivlal allegedly made dying declarations. Noting apparent contradictions between Hazari’s and Begaram’s accounts, the High Court observed that Begaram’s presence at the scene was “open to grave doubts,” and it was improper to contradict the testimony of a man who was apparently present by using the statement of another who was likely not there. The Court also remarked that Hazari appeared to have affirmed Begaram’s presence because the prosecution intended to produce Begaram as a witness and that Hazari was asked to say so; nothing in Hazari’s cross‑examination undermined his description of the incident. Although the Court noted other inconsistencies in Hazari’s statements made before the trial court and the police, it attached no significance to them, concluding that if Hazari mentioned Begaram merely to satisfy the prosecution’s strategy, his reliability was materially impaired.

In this matter, the Court observed that Hazari had mentioned the presence of Bega only because the prosecution intended to call Bega as a witness and Hazari had been prompted to do so. The Court held that such a circumstance seriously undermined Hazari’s reliability, making it unsafe to rely on his testimony as having any substantial value. This diminution of credibility was further aggravated by the finding that Mt. Rameshwari was innocent. Apart from Hazari’s evidence, the prosecution also relied on two dying declarations allegedly made by Shivlal to Gyaniram (PW‑4) and Jora (PW‑7). The Court noted that the testimonies of Gyaniram and Jora were marred by material contradictions in their statements at various stages of the proceedings. The learned Sessions Judge had expressly stated that, in the prevailing circumstances, he could not assign any weight or value to Gyaniram’s statement. The Court further observed that the evidence of these two witnesses could not form a firm foundation for upholding the conviction if Hazari’s testimony, the sole eye‑witness, were excluded, as it ought to be. The Court emphasized that, ordinarily, a dying declaration of the type on which the prosecution relied is insufficient on its own to sustain a conviction for murder.

The Sessions Judge had also expressed the opinion that the medical evidence of Doctor PW‑II rendered the claim that Shivlal could walk a short distance to the khala of Hukma or could speak to make a dying declaration improbable. The learned High Court, however, dismissed this view by stating that the doctor was relatively young and that his conclusions did not agree with the opinions expressed in standard medical jurisprudence texts authored by Modi and Lyon. The Court found this reasoning unsatisfactory, noting that the opinions in those texts were not necessarily applicable to the specific facts of the present case and that any attempt to discredit the doctor's testimony should have been put to him directly. Citing the decision in Sundarlal v. State of Madhya Pradesh, the Court reiterated that judges should not draw adverse conclusions against the accused by relying on passages from textbooks without having them examined by the medical witness. Consequently, the High Court was held to be in error in accepting the testimonies that supported the two dying declarations, and the Court concluded that the deceased’s alleged statements could not by themselves sustain the conviction. The Court also observed that the recovery of the kassi was a neutral fact, as it had not been proved to belong to Bhagwan Das. While the Supreme Court would not disturb the High Court’s findings, it noted that the conclusions regarding the evidence did not merit interference.

In this case, the Court observed that the material presented concerning the guilt or innocence of the accused is different from the material considered by the High Court, but when the evidence is such that no Tribunal could honestly infer guilt, the proper result is to set aside the conviction. The Court referred to the decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Stephen Seneviratne v. The King (1), where the Privy Council set aside a conviction and declared that “there are here no grounds on the evidence, taken as a whole, upon which any Tribunal could properly, as a matter of legitimate inference, arrive at a conclusion that the appellant was guilty.” Applying that principle, the Court held that the evidence in the present matter is of comparable quality and that no legitimate inference of the accused’s guilt can be drawn from it. The Court then turned to the second ground of attack on the High Court’s judgment, namely the absence of compelling reasons for overturning an earlier acquittal. The Court reiterated the well‑settled rule that a High Court may not disturb an acquittal unless there are substantial and compelling reasons for doing so. That rule has been affirmed in Surajpal Singh v. State (1), Ajmer Singh v. State of Punjab (3) and Aher Raja Khima v. State of Saurashtra (4). The present judgment of the High Court fails to disclose any such reasons that would justify interference with the findings of the trial court. Having found no basis to sustain the conviction and no adequate justification for setting aside the acquittal, the Court allowed the appeal, set aside the judgment of the Rajasthan High Court, restored the judgment of the Sessions Judge and ordered that the accused be acquitted. The appeal was therefore allowed.