S. G Angoli vs The State of Uttar Pradesh

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

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Criminal Appeals Nos. 20 and 21 of 1957

Decision Date: 14 May 1957

Coram: Gajendragadkar J.

In this case the petition was presented by S G Angoli against the State of Uttar Pradesh, and the decision was rendered by the Supreme Court of India on 14 May 1957. The matter arose from an appeal that challenged the conviction of two railway servants who had been tried under section 120B of the Indian Penal Code together with sections 5(2) read with 5(1)(c) and 5(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947. The trial was conducted by a Sessions Judge who, in agreement with the unanimous opinion of the assessors, found both appellants guilty and sentenced appellant No 1 to three years’ rigorous imprisonment and appellant No 2 to two years’ rigorous imprisonment. The Allahabad High Court, Lucknow Bench, affirmed both the conviction and the sentences on appeal. Before this Court the appellants contended that the conviction and the sentences were unlawful because they were not public servants within the meaning of section 2 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947. The Court examined the language of section 137(4) of the Indian Railways Act, 1890, as it stood before its amendment in 1955, and observed that the phrase “for any of the purposes of that Code” limited the operation of that subsection to offences under the Indian Penal Code and could not be extended beyond that statute. Consequently, for offences other than those penalised by the Code, neither subsection (1) of section 137, which applied only to offences under Chapter IX of the Code, nor subsection (4) could be invoked. The Court therefore held that the question of whether a railway servant charged under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947, was a public servant had to be decided under section 2 of that Act. Section 2 of the Prevention of Corruption Act incorporates the definition of a public servant contained in section 21 of the Indian Penal Code, and because the principal offences alleged against the appellants were under the Prevention of Corruption Act and not under the Code, section 2 applied, rendering the appellants public servants within the meaning of the statute. The Court noted the disapproval of the decision in Devi Ram Deep Chand v. The State (A.I.R. 1954 Punj. 189) and considered the authorities Ram Krishan v. The State of Delhi [1956] S.C.R. 182 and C.A. Montorio v. The State of Ajmer [1956] S.C.R. 682. The criminal appeals, numbered 20 and 21 of 1957, were filed by special leave against the Allahabad High Court’s judgment dated 14 September 1955 in criminal appeals numbered 374 and 376 of 1956, which arose from the Sessions trial judgment dated 24 April 1954 in Sessions Trial No. 106 of 1951.

The judgment and order dated 24 April 1954 of the Sessions Judge, Lucknow, in Sessions Trial No 106 of 1951 formed the factual basis for the appeals. Counsel R L Anand and S N Anand appeared for the appellant in Criminal Appeal No 20 of 1957, while N C Chatterjee and D N Mukherjee represented the appellant in Criminal Appeal No 21 of 1957. Counsel H R Khanna and R H Dhebar appeared for the respondent. The Court delivered its judgment on 14 May 1959, with Justice Gajendragadkar presiding. The core issue before the Court was whether the two appellants, S Gangoli and P R Chaudhri, could be considered public servants within the meaning of section 2 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947 (Act II of 1947). The Court noted that Chaudhri had been appointed Assistant Permanent Way Inspector at Sultanpur in the East Indian Railway, Lucknow Division, in March 1948, and that Gangoli held the post of Assistant Pay Clerk in the same division during the same period. The prosecution alleged that the appellants had committed an offence under section 120B of the Indian Penal Code as well as under section 5(2) read with sections 5(1)(c) and 5(1)(d) of the Act. According to the Pay Commission’s report, the railway department had entrusted a sum of Rs 16,685 to appellant 2 (Chaudhri) for distribution among Class IV staff working under appellant 1 (Gangoli). The disbursement was required to be made in the presence of, and attested by, appellant 1. The prosecution case was that both appellants entered into a criminal conspiracy to misappropriate part of the entrusted amount by paying the Class IV employees amounts lower than those to which they were entitled and by falsifying the paysheets to show that the full dues had been paid. The alleged conspiratorial payment was made on 11 March 1948 while a train was running between Faizabad and Chilbila. The paysheets recorded that the entire sum of Rs 16,591 had been paid to 216 employees, with the entries indicating that the payment was effected by appellant 2 and attested by appellant 1. In reality, the whole amount was not distributed; the employees collectively received Rs 1,555 less than they were due, indicating that the appellants had misappropriated approximately Rs 1,555 and had falsified the paysheets to conceal the shortfall. Within a few days of that payment, the employees became suspicious after learning that persons recruited on the same day received larger arrears. They approached senior officials and lodged complaints. The officials advised the employees to submit their grievances in writing, and several employees subsequently filed written applications contending that they had not received the full payment of their arrears.

In response to the employees’ written complaints that they had not been paid the arrears due to them, an inquiry was initiated and Mr Dalip Singh recorded several statements on 6 and 7 April 1948. The prosecution asserted that this development alarmed appellant No 1, who then attempted to suppress the matter by assembling all the workers and paying them the amounts that had previously been wrongfully deducted from their arrears. According to the prosecution’s case, on that same day three documents—Exhibits 5, 10 and 11—were executed, and these documents were said to demonstrate clearly that the appellants had committed the offences with which they were charged. Both appellants repudiated the charges. They maintained that they had not entered into any conspiracy and that they had been falsely implicated. Appellant No 1 alleged that the case against him had been fabricated, that false evidence had been obtained by H N Das with the assistance of Shambu, and that the animosity between Das and the appellant had motivated the false testimony. Appellant No 2 contended that he had been wrongfully implicated because, contrary to the police’s suggestion, he had refused to accuse appellant No 1, and he asserted that the prosecution’s evidence was biased, false, and that the documents produced were either fabricated or irrelevant. To support its case, the prosecution examined a total of forty‑four witnesses, relied upon the three documents Ex 5, 10 and 11, and argued that the charges framed against the appellants were fully established by this evidence. The learned Sessions Judge at Lucknow, who tried the case, concurred with the unanimous opinion of the assessors, held that the charges had been proved beyond reasonable doubt, and consequently convicted both appellants, sentencing appellant No 1 to three years’ rigorous imprisonment and appellant No 2 to two years’ rigorous imprisonment. The appellants appealed this judgment to the High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, but the appellate court dismissed the appeals and largely affirmed the trial judge’s conclusions. Justice Kidwai, who presided over the appeals, gave some weight to the defence’s argument, finding that Das was not a reliable witness and might have been responsible for fabricating Exhibit 10, and also concluding that Shambu was an unreliable witness. Nevertheless, Justice Kidwai held that, on the whole, the testimony of the gangmen was satisfactory and that Exhibits 5 and 11 corroborated the oral evidence presented by the prosecution. Accordingly, the High Court confirmed the conviction and sentence imposed by the trial judge. The appellants have now lodged special leave applications before this Court, raising a single issue that their conviction and sentence are unlawful.

In this appeal the appellants contend that their conviction and sentence are unlawful because they were not public servants within the meaning of section two of the Act. Section two of the Act defines a public servant by reference to the definition contained in section twenty‑one of the Indian Penal Code. The parties do not dispute that, according to section twenty‑one, the appellants qualify as public servants. At the relevant time the appellants were employed by the East Indian Railway, an undertaking that was owned, managed and operated by the Government of India; consequently, if the status of the appellants were to be determined solely by applying section twenty‑one of the Penal Code, there would be no difficulty in concluding that they were public servants as defined by that provision.

Nevertheless, the respondents assert that the status of a railway servant must also be examined in light of section one‑three‑seven of the Indian Railways Act, 1890. It is recalled that when the 1890 Act was enacted, the great majority of Indian railways were owned and administered by public limited companies, and railway employees defined in section three‑seven of that Act could not be treated as public servants under section twenty‑one of the Penal Code. After the nationalisation of the railways and their takeover by the Government of India, the situation changed materially, but before that nationalisation the prevailing view was that railway employees did not fall within the definition of section twenty‑one. To overcome that difficulty, section one‑three‑seven, subsections one and four, were inserted to bring railway servants within the definition of public servant for certain purposes.

Subsection one of section one‑three‑seven provides that every railway servant shall be deemed to be a public servant for the purposes of Chapter Nine of the Indian Penal Code. The effect of this provision is to treat railway servants as public servants under section twenty‑one for offences that are dealt with in sections one‑sixty‑one to one‑seventy‑one of Chapter Nine. In other words, the provision extends the definition of public servant to include railway servants solely for the category of offences enumerated in Chapter Nine, even though they might not satisfy the ordinary requirements of section twenty‑one. Subsection four, on the other hand, states that notwithstanding anything contained in section twenty‑one of the Penal Code, a railway servant shall not be deemed to be a public servant for any purpose of that Code except those mentioned in subsection one. The appellants’ argument relies upon this latter clause.

According to counsel for the respondents, Mr B L Anand, subsection four plainly provides that railway servants are to be considered public servants only for the purposes of Chapter Nine, and because the appellants were not charged with any offence falling within Chapter Nine they cannot be deemed public servants for the offences under sections five‑one and five‑two of the Act. This is the precise ground upon which the respondents contend that the conviction and sentence are invalid.

It is true that the two sub‑sections of the Railways Act referred to have been amended by Act 17 of 1955. The amendment deleted sub‑section (4) and altered sub‑section (1) so that it now states that every railway servant who is a public servant within the meaning of section 21 of the Indian Penal Code shall be deemed to be a public servant for the purposes of chapter IX and for the application of section 409 of that Code. In other words, after the amendment a railway servant would be treated as a public servant under section 21 only when the offence falls within chapter IX or section 409. However, the present discussion is concerned with the wording of section 137 as it existed before its amendment in 1955. At that time, sub‑section (4) of section 137 began with a non‑obstante clause and expressly declared that a railway servant shall not be deemed to be a public servant for any of the purposes of the Indian Penal Code, subject to the exception specified in sub‑section (1). The argument advanced by the appellants is that the non‑obstante clause excludes the operation of section 21 in every case except those covered by chapter IX, and therefore, because the offences for which they were charged lie outside chapter IX, sub‑section (4) bars their being treated as public servants for those offences. This argument overlooks the crucial words “for any of the purposes of that Code” that occur in sub‑section (4). Those words show that the bar created by the provision is confined to the purposes of the Indian Penal Code and cannot be extended beyond those purposes. What sub‑section (4) actually provides is that if a railway servant is charged with an offence under the Indian Penal Code that does not fall within chapter IX, he cannot be regarded as a public servant for that offence. The provision does not intend to create any rule concerning offences that lie outside the Penal Code. Consequently, for offences outside the Code neither sub‑section (1) nor sub‑section (4) of the Railways Act will apply, and the question of whether railway servants fall within the mischief of the Act must be answered by looking at the provisions of the Act itself.

The next issue, therefore, is whether the appellants can be said to be public servants under section 2 of the Act. Section 2, as previously indicated, essentially incorporates the definition of a public servant given in section 21 of the Indian Penal Code. There can be no doubt that the effect of section 2 is to require that the status of the accused persons be determined by applying section 21 of the Indian Penal Code as if that section were part of the Act. Hence, the determination of whether the appellants are public servants must be made by using the criteria laid down in section 21, and not by relying on the limited deeming provision of the Railways Act that applies only to chapter IX offences. This approach leads to the conclusion that the appellants cannot avoid being classified as public servants under section 2 of the Act simply because the Railways Act contains a bar in sub‑section (4) that is limited to the purposes of the Indian Penal Code.

Because the appellants are deemed to be public servants under section 2 of the Act, they cannot reject that conclusion. Their argument that the reference in section 2 of the Act to section 21 of the Indian Penal Code automatically activates the limitation imposed by section 137(4) of the Railways Act is unconvincing. That limitation applies only when the status of an accused is being determined for any purpose under the Code other than the provisions of chapter IX. In the present matter the principal offences are charged under the Act itself and not under the Code; consequently section 137(4) does not apply. Further consideration of the construction of section 137(4) reveals another point. Section 137(1) expands the definition of section 21 of the Code to include railway servants who would otherwise fail to meet the criteria of section 21. The deeming provision in subsection (1) would be unnecessary and inappropriate if those railway servants could already be classified as public servants under section 21 directly. In other words, railway servants employed by a railway administration owned and operated by the Government of India would qualify as public servants under section 21 without resorting to the statutory fiction created by section 137(1). Having introduced that statutory fiction through subsection (1), subsection (4) claims to cover the same scope and the same class of railway servants, stating that this class shall not be deemed public servants except as provided in subsection (1). This negative statutory fiction is intended solely to underscore that persons treated as public servants by virtue of subsection (1) may be dealt with only under the provisions of chapter II of the Code and not under any other chapter. The question arises whether the Legislature intended subsection (4) to exclude the application of Code provisions other than those in chapter IX to railway servants who would already be public servants under section 21 without the assistance of subsection (1) of section 137. At first glance, such an intention cannot be ascribed to the Legislature. It is true that the non‑obstante clause offers some support to the appellants’ contention that, except for the provisions of chapter IX, section 21 of the Code would be inapplicable to railway servants; however, that clause cannot, on its face, be interpreted as having a broader scope than subsection (1) of the principal section. The non‑obstante clause appears to have been inserted ex abundanti cautela to clarify the effect of section 137(1). The two subsections therefore introduce a positive fiction through subsection (1) and a negative fiction through subsection (4), both achieving the same result. Since the present dispute concerns only the provisions of the Act and not any provisions of the Code other than those in chapter IX, it is unnecessary to pursue this line of analysis further or to render a definitive opinion on that specific aspect of the matter.

In addressing the matter, the Court turned to the judgments that had been highlighted for consideration. The first authority cited by counsel for the petitioner was the Punjab High Court decision reported in (1955) 2 S.C.R. 977, Rai Bahadur Kanwar Raj Nath & Ors. v. Pramod C. Bhatt, Custodian of Evacuee Property, which had been referred to in the case of Devi Ram Deep Chand v. The State. In that case the accused were goods clerks employed by the railways and they faced prosecution before a First‑Class Magistrate on charges under Section 408 of the Indian Penal Code. The accused contended that the alleged offences were, in substance, offences punishable under Section 5 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and therefore should be tried exclusively by a Special Judge. Accordingly, the High Court was urged to transfer the proceedings from the magistrate’s court to the Special Judge’s jurisdiction.

The High Court’s judgment revealed that the learned Assistant Advocate‑General had informed the Court that the prosecution did not intend to frame or prove any charge against the appellants under Section 5 of the Act. As a result, Section 2 of the Act did not require construction in that proceeding, and the observations made by Justice Dulat, that persons who are not public servants within the meaning of Section 21 of the Penal Code cannot be deemed public servants for the purposes of the 1947 Act, were rendered inapplicable. The Court noted that, if those observations were intended as a determination on the point, they rested on an erroneous construction of Section 137(4).

Counsel for the petitioner also drew the Court’s attention to two Supreme Court decisions that appeared contrary to his argument: Ram Krishan v. The State of Delhi and C. A. Montorio v. The State of Ajmer. In Ram Krishan, the respondents had been charged under Section 120B of the Penal Code for a criminal conspiracy to cause an offence of criminal misconduct punishable under Section 5(2) of the Act, the latter read with Section 116 of the Penal Code. Both counts resulted in convictions by a Special Judge, and the High Court affirmed those convictions. On appeal before the Supreme Court, one of the issues raised by the appellants was that Madan Lal, a railway servant, was not a public servant within the meaning of the Act. The offence in question had been committed on 29 December 1951, and the argument relied upon Section 137(1) and (4), asserting that a railway servant such as Madan Lal could not be regarded as a public servant under Section 2 of the Act. Justice Chandrasekhara Aiyar, who delivered the judgment, referred to Section 137(1) and observed that subsection (4) had been omitted by the 1955 amendment, and then proceeded to analyse the application of Section 2 of the Act.

In delivering the judgment, the Court referred to section 137(1) of the Railways Act and noted that subsection (4) had been removed by the amendment enacted in 1955. The learned judge then turned to section 2 of the Prevention of Corruption Act and stated that, before the amendment, railway employees were regarded as public servants only for the purposes of Chapter IX of the Indian Penal Code. Following the amendment, however, all railway employees became public servants not merely for that limited purpose but generally under the Prevention of Corruption Act. It was observed, with due respect, that this observation appears to grant the amended provisions of section 137 of the Railways Act a retrospective effect. The Court also observed that the precise construction of the relevant provisions had not been fully argued before it and therefore had not been examined in detail. Nevertheless, the Court accepted that, with respect to an offence committed in 1951, Madan Lal was held to be a public servant under section 2 of the Act. In the earlier case of Montorio [1956] S.C.R. 682 the principal issue before the Court was whether the accused qualified as a public servant under section 21 of the Indian Penal Code. The Court examined that question, construed section 21, and concluded that the appellant was an officer within the meaning of clause 21(9) and therefore a public servant under section 21. The judgment also referred to the earlier decision in Ram Krishan [1956] S.C.R. 182, noting that the earlier decision stated that, before the amendment of section 137 of the Railways Act by Act 17 of 1955, railway servants were treated as public servants only for the purposes of Chapter IX of the Indian Penal Code, but in any event they were public servants under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The Court, however, pointed out that this latter statement does not appear to be supported by the actual judgment in Ram Krishan.

Returning once more to section 2 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, the Court held that the definition of “public servant” in that provision incorporates the same definition contained in section 21 of the Indian Penal Code. On that basis, the Court found that the appellants are undeniably public servants. Consequently, the lower courts were correct in holding that the appellants could be validly charged and tried for offences punishable under section 5(2) read with sections 5(1)(c) and 5(1)(d) of the Act. The Court further observed that the validity of the charge under section 120B of the Indian Penal Code cannot be challenged. counsel for appellant No 1 and counsel for appellant No 2 had appealed to the Court seeking a reduction of the sentences imposed on their clients. The plea was supported by an argument that, although the charge involved a large sum of Rs 1,555, the evidence placed before the Court demonstrated misappropriation of only Rs 218, a considerably smaller amount.

The petitioners argued that the material on record demonstrated misappropriation of only Rs. 218, a figure that is far lower than the sum of Rs. 1,555 originally alleged, and they urged that the sentence should be reduced on that basis. The Court observed that, in the facts of this case, the quantum of money actually proved to have been misappropriated does not have a decisive or even a material impact on the appropriate sentence. The Court noted that the lower courts had taken into account the various positions occupied by the appellants, the relationships that existed between the appellants and the Class IV servants, the manner in which the appellants carried out the misappropriation, and the other surrounding circumstances. All of these factors were considered by the trial courts when they passed the concurrent sentences against each appellant. After reviewing these considerations, the Court found no reason to interfere with the sentencing orders that had been properly made by the courts below. Consequently, the Court held that the appeals lacked merit and were accordingly dismissed. The Court further directed that the appellants must report and surrender to the authorities in order to be admitted to bail. In sum, the appeals were dismissed, and the orders of the lower courts were left undisturbed.