Kapil Deo Shukla vs The State Of Uttar Pradesh

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

Court: supreme-court

Case Number: Criminal Appeal No. 82 of 1957

Decision Date: 14 October, 1957

Coram: Bhuvneshwar P. Sinha, P. Govinda Menon, J.L. Kapur

In this matter, the Supreme Court of India delivered its judgment on 14 October 1957. The case was styled Kapil Deo Shukla versus The State of Uttar Pradesh. The judgment was authored by Justice Bhuvneshwar P. Sinha, with Justices P. Govinda Menon and J. L. Kapur forming the bench. The citation for the decision is 1958 AIR 121 and 1958 SCR 640. The legal issues concerned provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure, specifically sections 418 and 419, and the effect of a jury trial in which the jurors were not proficient in English.

The petitioner, Kapil Deo Shukla, had been tried before a Sessions Judge and a jury of five members for offences under sections 477-A and 408 of the Indian Penal Code. A substantial part of the documentary evidence presented at trial was written in English, and one of the principal witnesses gave his statement in English as well. The central question for the trial was the authorship of certain forged documents. It emerged that the jurors did not possess a good command of the English language and therefore were not in a position to evaluate the evidence that hinged on the meaning of those English documents. Despite this limitation, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty. The Sessions Judge accepted the jury’s verdict and consequently acquitted the petitioner.

The State of Uttar Pradesh appealed the acquittal to the Allahabad High Court. In the memorandum of appeal filed before the High Court, only a single ground was raised: that the order of acquittal was against the weight of the evidence on record and was contrary to law. The High Court accepted the appeal, examined the record, and set aside the acquittal, convicting the petitioner on the charges. On further appeal before this Court, the petitioner argued that the appeal was infirm because the memorandum of appeal had failed to specify any particular errors of law, a requirement he said was mandated by section 418 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. He also contended that the trial before the Sessions Judge should be regarded as a non-trial in law because the jury was incompetent to decide the crucial issue of authorship of the forged documents.

The Court examined the purpose of a memorandum of appeal and held that it must contain a concise statement of the grounds on which the appellant proposes to rely. The practice then prevailing in the Allahabad High Court of allowing appeals without setting out specific grounds of law or fact was disapproved, even though section 419 of the Code of Criminal Procedure does not expressly require such a statement. The Court further observed that the trial before the Sessions Judge was “coram non-judice” because the jury, being unable to understand English, could not properly decide the essential question concerning the forged documents. The Court emphasized that this deficiency went beyond a mere procedural irregularity; it amounted to a mis-trial. Accordingly, the Court followed the precedent set in Ras Behari Lal v. The King Emperor (1933) L.R. 60 I.A. 354, which held that an incompetent jury renders the trial ineffective.

The appeal was filed under criminal appellate jurisdiction as Criminal Appeal No. 82 of 1957, seeking special leave to challenge the judgment and order dated 12 August 1953 of the Allahabad High Court in Criminal Appeal No. 114 of 1951. That High Court judgment itself arose from the order dated 31 July 1950 of the Additional Sessions Judge at Allahabad in Criminal Sessions Trial No. 22 of 1949. After considering the arguments and the legal principles involved, the Supreme Court concluded that the memorandum of appeal was defective for not stating specific grounds and that the trial before the Sessions Judge was void due to the jury’s inability to decide the pivotal issue. Accordingly, the Court set aside the conviction affirmed by the High Court and restored the acquittal originally granted by the Sessions Judge.

The present appeal by special leave challenges the judgment and order dated 12 August 1953 of a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court, whose members were Justices Desai and Beg. That High Court judgment had set aside the order of acquittal issued by the learned Additional Sessions Judge at Allahabad on 31 July 1950 in Criminal Sessions Trial No. 22 of 1949. The appellant, who had been represented by counsel S. P. Sinha and B. C. Misra, had been charged under sections 408 and 477A of the Indian Penal Code. The trial was conducted before a jury of five members, and the jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty. Consequently, the learned Additional Sessions Judge accepted the jury’s verdict and acquitted the accused. The Government of Uttar Pradesh subsequently appealed to the High Court. In a detailed judgment of approximately 130 typed pages, the High Court set aside the acquittal, convicted the appellant under the aforementioned sections, and imposed a rigorous imprisonment of four years along with a fine of ten thousand rupees. The fine, if paid, was directed to be partially allocated as compensation of seven thousand rupees to the Imperial Bank of India, Allahabad. In default of payment, an additional rigorous imprisonment of one year under section 408 and a further rigorous imprisonment of four years under section 477A were ordered, with the two terms to run consecutively. The appellant’s request for a certificate of fitness to appeal to this Court was denied, but the appellant obtained special leave to appeal by an order dated 15 December 1953, delivered by Justice Sinha.

The Court noted that, for purposes of assessing the legality of the trial, it was unnecessary to elaborate the entire prosecution case, except to record that the appellant was alleged to have committed criminal breach of trust involving valuable securities worth approximately Rs 7,410 of the Imperial Bank at Allahabad while employed there as a clerk. It was further alleged that, with intent to defraud, he destroyed, altered, mutilated and falsified accounts and other papers during the period from January to July 1946. Various contentions were raised by counsel for the appellant, but the Court found it essential to focus on two principal points. The first point asserted that the appeal by the State of Uttar Pradesh to the High Court should not have been entertained because the memorandum of appeal did not satisfy the statutory requirements laid down in sections 418 and 419 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The second point contended that the trial in the Sessions Court did not constitute a trial at law. In respect of the first contention, it is enough to say that though the memorandum of appeal

In this case, the Court noted that although the memorandum of appeal filed in the High Court was wholly inadequate, the defect did not render the memorandum void such that the High Court could reject it on a technical ground. The issue arose because, apart from the prayer, the only ground taken in the petition of appeal was that the order of acquittal was against the weight of evidence on the record and contrary to law. The argument advanced was that under section 418 of the Criminal Procedure Code, when a trial is by jury, an appeal lies only on a question of law, and because the memorandum of appeal did not set out any specific error of law, this serious omission meant that, in law, the document was not a petition of appeal that could be entertained. This contention was raised before the High Court as a preliminary objection to the maintainability of the appeal. The High Court overruled the objection, holding that section 419, the specific provision dealing with petitions of appeal, merely requires that the petition be in writing and be accompanied by a copy of the judgment or order appealed against, and, in jury trials, a copy of the heads of charge recorded under section 367 of the Code. The High Court observed that there is no provision in the Code requiring the petition to specify the matters of fact or law on which the appeal is based. The Court also referred to the prevailing practice in that Court, according to which no specific grounds are pleaded either on fact or on law. According to the High Court, there is no distinction between an appeal based on facts and an appeal based only on questions of law in a jury trial. Considering these points, the High Court held that the preliminary objection was not well founded in law. Assuming that the High Court’s understanding of the legal position is correct, the Court nevertheless expressed disapproval of the practice described. A memorandum of appeal is intended to be a concise statement of the grounds upon which the appellant proposes to rely. It serves as notice to the Court of the specific issues to be raised and as notice to the respondent that he must be prepared to meet those particular grounds. A memorandum that contains only a bare ground, such as the one quoted, is of no assistance to either party or to the Court. While it may compel the drafter to consider the judgment under appeal, this slight advantage is outweighed by the serious disadvantage to the parties and the Court, which must hear the appeal. Such a bare statement leaves the door open for a wide range of submissions, wastes the Court’s time, and surprises the respondent.

In this case the Court observed that a vague and overly brief statement of the grounds of appeal creates serious problems for both the parties and the judiciary. Such a “bald” ground permits unrestricted and unpredictable submissions, which can waste the Court’s time and catch respondents off-guard. The Court highlighted that courts, especially in the region from which this appeal originates, are already heavily burdened with a large backlog of undisposed matters. Consequently, counsel and parties should concentrate on the essential aspects of a case, removing unnecessary material, to promote a speedy and cost-effective administration of justice. The Court suggested that the use of such inadequate grounds may have contributed to the unusually lengthy judgment of the High Court in this matter, and therefore, this practice should be discontinued. A more efficient method of drafting grounds of appeal is required. When counsel focuses solely on the substantive issues, eliminating redundancies, the arguments become clearer and more helpful to the Court, allowing it to direct its attention to the most important points of the dispute. The Court noted that, because the appeal succeeded on the second ground, there was no need to elaborate further on the first ground.

The second ground on which the Court found the appeal should be allowed is based on the findings of the High Court itself. The case involved a substantial volume of documentary evidence, almost entirely in English, and oral evidence was primarily used to link those documents and explain their relevance to the charges of criminal breach of trust and falsification of accounts kept by the Bank. The prosecution’s witness, identified as Mr Ganguli, Agent of the Bank and witness number 26, was examined extensively, giving testimony over twelve days between October and December 1949. His evidence comprises roughly forty-five typed pages. Mr Ganguli stated in an application that his testimony was originally given in English and that he could not verify whether the Hindi version recorded by the deponent-writer was accurate, as he was not familiar with Hindi. The High Court further remarked on the nature of the case and the qualifications required of jurors for a proper understanding. It observed that the case was not suitable for trial by an ordinary jury because it was highly complex, involved a mass of documents, and the resolution depended on determining who authored or prepared those documents. Since all the documents were in English, the Court concluded that only a person with a good command of English could reliably assess the writings, rendering an ordinary jury inadequate for a satisfactory judgment.

The Court noted that a juror could not render a satisfactory judgment unless he possessed a good command of English and was capable of evaluating the manner in which the documents were written. The offences for which the respondent had been charged were instituted under a Government order that expressly required trial by a jury, and the order remained in force unless the Government chose to revoke or amend it. The Government neither revoked nor altered the order, nor did it declare that the case should be tried by a special jury pursuant to section 269(2) of the Criminal Procedure Code.

In the Court’s opinion, the passage quoted from the High Court accurately reflected the situation before the Court of Session. The judgment of the High Court showed that the learned Advocate General, who argued on behalf of the State, contended that the jurors were not equipped to perform the task of properly resolving the dispute. Consequently, the High Court directed the trial court to conduct an inquiry and to submit a report on this specific issue.

After examining the report submitted by the trial court, the High Court recorded its findings as follows: of the five jurors selected by the learned Sessions Judge, three possessed sufficient knowledge of English, the fourth knew very little English and was unable to read the documents produced in the case, and the fifth also lacked adequate knowledge of English; he could comprehend an English letter only with difficulty and could not read English newspapers. These observations were derived from a report made by the learned Sessions Judge after he summoned the jurors and questioned them on a letter issued by the High Court.

The Court affirmed that it was satisfied that the two jurors, Shri Sheik Ashique Ali and Shri Farman Ali, were not in a position to decide the question of authorship of the forged documents satisfactorily. The issue was not merely one of understanding the contents of the documents; the jurors also had to determine whether the documents had been written or signed by the respondent as alleged by the prosecution witnesses. The Court concluded that the two jurors did not possess sufficient acquaintance with English to decide that question properly.

Based on that finding, the Court held that the appellant’s contention that the trial had been conducted coram non judice was well-founded. The Court further observed that the present case was analogous to the case of Ras Behari Lal v. The King Emperor, in which a seven-member jury returned a majority verdict of six to one finding the accused guilty. The trial judge accepted that verdict and sentenced some of the accused to death, but the High Court subsequently overruled the accused’s claim that there had been no legal trial because some jurors did not know sufficient English to follow the proceedings.

In that case a juror was found not to have possessed sufficient knowledge of English to follow the proceedings in Court. The Judicial Committee granted special leave to appeal on a report made by the High Court which stated that one of the jurors did not know enough English to understand the trial. Before the Judicial Committee, counsel for the prosecution conceded, and in the view of the Lords this concession was rightly made, that the appellants had not been tried and that consequently the convictions and sentences could not be upheld. Lord Atkin delivered the judgment of the Judicial Committee and made the following observations upon the concession made by counsel for the respondent: “In their Lordships’ opinion, this is necessarily the correct view. They think that the effect of the incompetence of a juror is to deny to the accused an essential part of the protection accorded to him by law and that the result of the trial in the present case was a clear miscarriage of justice. They have no doubt that in those circumstances the conviction and sentence should not be allowed to stand.” The Court noted that the legal position in the instant case was the same.

The State Government argued that in the present case the jury had returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty and therefore there was no prejudice to the accused persons. While it is true that the incompetence of the jury was raised by counsel for the State Government in the High Court, the findings of the High Court, as quoted above, made it clear that, irrespective of the result, there was in law no trial at all. The question of prejudice did not arise because the defect was not a mere irregularity but a case of “mis-trial,” as described by the Judicial Committee. The Court expressed regret that a prosecution which had been pending for a long period, concerning an offence said to have been committed about eleven years earlier, should end in this manner. However, the Court observed that the State Government could, if advised, take steps for a retrial, as was directed by the Judicial Committee in the reported case referred to above. Accordingly, the appeal was allowed and the convictions and sentences were set aside. The Court did not express any opinion on whether the matter was fit for a fresh trial by a competent jury or by a Court of Session without a jury, should the present law permit such a proceeding. The matter was ordered to be sent back to the High Court for any necessary directions, if the Government moves the Court in that regard. The appeal was allowed.