Ratan Gond vs The State Of Bihar

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

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Criminal Appeal No. 76 of 1958

Decision Date: 19 September, 1958

Coram: S.K. Das, Syed Jaffer Imam, J.L. Kapur

Ratan Gond versus The State of Bihar was decided on 19 September 1958 by the Supreme Court of India. The judgment was authored by Justice S K Das and the bench was composed of Justice S K Das, Justice Syed Jaffer Imam and Justice J L Kapur. The case is reported in 1959 AIR 18 and 1959 SCR 1336, and is cited in R 1984 SC1622 (18). The matters addressed concerned the admissibility of statements made by a deceased person, the relevance of an extrajudicial confession, and the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence under Sections 24, 32 and 33 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. The appellant, Ratan Gond, was charged with the murder of a girl named Baisakhi. Information supplied by Aghani, the younger sister of the deceased, led the authorities to recover the headless body of Baisakhi. The appellant fled the scene but was later located in another village and was returned to the crime-scene area by a village volunteer force. During an interrogation conducted by the Mukhia, the Sarpanch and a panch of the Gram Panchayat, the appellant made an extrajudicial confession. Police also recovered a blood-stained cutting instrument from a room belonging to the appellant. At his request, investigators collected several strands of hair from a spot a short distance from where the body had been found; the hair was stained with human blood and appeared to be scalp hair of a female. Based on this evidence, the trial court convicted the appellant and sentenced him to death, a judgment that was subsequently affirmed by the High Court. The courts had also taken into consideration statements made by Aghani to her mother and to other individuals, wherein she said that the deceased had last been seen in the company of the appellant. Aghani died before her statements could be recorded in any formal judicial proceeding. The appellant argued that Aghani’s statements were inadmissible, that his extrajudicial confession was irrelevant, and that the circumstantial evidence did not suffice to establish his guilt. The Supreme Court held that Aghani’s statements were not admissible under either Section 32 or Section 33 of the Evidence Act. Section 33 did not apply because the statements were not made in any judicial proceeding nor before any person authorized by law to record them. Moreover, the statements did not pertain to the cause of Aghani’s own death or to circumstances surrounding it; they related only to the death of her sister and therefore did not fall within clause 1 of Section 32, which was the only provision that could have been relevant. The Court further observed that, in view of the Bihar Panchayat Raj Act, the Mukhia, the Sarpanch and the panch who heard the confession were persons in authority within the meaning of Section 24 of the Evidence Act, but no evidence was found of any threat, promise or inducement being offered to procure the confession. The facts that the appellant was brought back to the village

The Court observed that the fact the appellant was taken back to his village by a volunteer force and that two or three hours elapsed before he made the confession did not demonstrate that the confession was involuntary. No material was found indicating that the confession contained false or inaccurate statements. Although the circumstantial evidence alone might not have been sufficient to establish the appellant’s guilt, it provided ample corroboration for the confession, and this corroboration was of a character that linked the appellant directly to the murder. The judgment therefore proceeded to set out the appellate jurisdiction and the procedural history. The appeal was Criminal Appeal No. 76 of 1958, taken on a special leave from the judgment and order dated 4 March 1958 of the Patna High Court in Criminal Appeal No. 50 of 1958 and Death Reference No. 3 of 1958, which arose from the judgment and order dated 18 January 1958 of the Court of the First Additional Judicial Commissioner of Chotanagpur at Ranchi in Sessions Trial No. XC of 1957. Counsel for the appellant was instructed, while counsel for the respondent appeared for the State. The judgment was delivered on 19 September 1958 by Justice S. K. DAS. This was an appeal by special leave. The appellant, Ratan Gond, was approximately twenty-eight years of age. He had been tried under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, convicted and sentenced to death by the learned Additional Judicial Commissioner of Ranchi, Bihar. Under section 374 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Commissioner was required to forward the record to the Patna High Court for confirmation of the sentence, which the appellant also contested by filing an appeal before that Court. The High Court, sitting as a Division Bench, considered both the reference under section 374 and the appeal together, accepted the reference, dismissed the appeal, and thereby confirmed the death sentence. Subsequently, on 19 May 1958, the appellant obtained special leave and filed the present appeal in accordance with that leave.

The factual matrix disclosed by the Court was confined to a narrow scope. The appellant resided in the village of Urte, located in the Tola Banmunda area of the Kolebera police station within Ranchi district. In the same village and Tola lived a widow identified as Mst. Jatri, who was the mother of two young daughters: Baisakhi, about nine years old, and Aghani, about five years old. The matter before this Court concerned the murder of the elder daughter, Baisakhi. On Tuesday, 7 May 1957, the two sisters had gone together to pluck wild berries in a hilly jungle situated a short distance from their home; witnesses variously estimated this distance as ranging from three hundred yards to slightly more than a mile. The Court noted that it could provide an outline of the village’s location and of the adjoining hilly terrain. According to the testimony of a witness identified as Rup Ram, the geographical setting included the village of Urte within the Tola Banmunda settlement, with the nearby hilly tract of Amtis Chua hill, flanked by jungle on two sides and a spring or well positioned between the jungle strips. This description set the scene for the events leading to the appellant’s conviction.

In the hamlet of Tola Banmunda, where the appellant’s uncle lived, the settlement comprised roughly forty houses altogether. To the north of this cluster lay a small elevated area known as Amtis Chua hill that was commonly visited by the villagers. The hill was flanked on both sides by dense jungle, and between the two strips of forest a natural spring or well could be seen. On Tuesday, May 7, 1957, the mother, Mst. Jatri (identified as PW-2), went out to collect a type of wild fruit locally called Keond berries at a location different from her home. She departed early in the morning, leaving her two young daughters, Baisakhi and Aghani, inside the house alone. She returned around midday and discovered that only the younger child, Aghani, was present in the home and that Baisakhi was missing. She asked Aghani where her sister Baisakhi had gone, and the child gave a narrative that she repeated later to her mother and to several other villagers on the same day and the following day. Aghani died a few months after the incident, before her statements could be formally recorded in any judicial proceeding. The lower courts and the High Court, however, referred to and relied upon those statements in their findings. One argument raised by the appellant contended that Aghani’s statements could not be admitted as evidence under sections 32 or 33 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. The Court agreed with that submission and therefore chose to exclude any reference to Aghani’s statements when setting out the factual matrix of the case. When Baisakhi failed to return home by the evening, Mst. Jatri walked toward Amtis Chua hill in an attempt to locate her daughter, but she was unable to find her.

The next morning information that Baisakhi was missing was conveyed to Rup Ram (PW-1), who had been away in the village of Targa making tiles on the preceding Monday. Rup Ram arrived back in Banmunda on Wednesday, 8 May 1957, to report the disappearance of the missing child. In the intervening period other villagers, including Dalpat Sai (PW-4), the village mukhia, and Sohar (PW-5), the village chaukidar, had also been informed of Baisakhi’s disappearance. Aghani led Rup Ram and the villagers to the base of Amtis Chua hill, pointing out the spring or well situated there. It was at a short distance from this water source that the party discovered a headless corpse lying there. The body was positively identified as that of Baisakhi by Mst. Jatri and other witnesses because the deceased was wearing a white saree with a yellow border and several distinctive ornaments. Specifically, the corpse displayed five red churis on the right wrist, two red churis on the left wrist, and one bera on the left wrist. It also bore a brass ring on the left finger and a string of beads that Baisakhi habitually wore as a mala. After the body was discovered and identified, Dalpat Sai ordered some of his companions to remain at the spot to guard the corpse. He then proceeded to the appellant’s residence, which was found empty, and subsequently dispatched Rup Ram and the chaukidar to the police station, which lay a considerable distance away.

On Thursday, 9 May 1957, at about ten o’clock in the morning, Rup Ram and the village watchman arrived at the police station in Kolebera. Rup Ram gave a statement that was recorded by the Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police. The statement set out the version of events as narrated by Aghani and incorporated the other facts that had been discovered up to that time. Later on the same day the accused was located in the house of his sister’s husband in the neighbouring village of Karmapani. The village volunteers seized him there and escorted him back to the village of Banmunda. At approximately one or two in the afternoon, the accused was interrogated by Dalpat Sai, who was the mukhia of the Gram Panchayat, by Krishna Chandra Singh, the Sarpanch of the Gram Panchayat, and by Praduman Singh, one of the panches. During that interrogation the accused made an extra-judicial confession to the three officials. He admitted that he had killed the child Baisakhi because he was motivated by the promise of money; a contractor who was constructing a bridge over the Lurki river had offered a sum of eighty rupees for a human head. The village authorities kept the accused in their custody until the Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police reached the village on Friday, 10 May 1957. The police officer arrived at about three in the morning and escorted the accused to the spot where the headless corpse of Baisakhi lay. The Assistant Sub-Inspector then conducted an inquest on the dead body and collected the items that had been found near it, including twenty-nine beads from the “mala” that the deceased had been wearing. He also discovered a weapon, locally called a “balua”, situated in the north-facing room of the accused’s house, positioned between a wall and the roof. The “balua” bore some bloodstains, although the stains had disintegrated to the extent that their exact nature could not be ascertained. When the Assistant Sub-Inspector asked the accused where the head of Baisakhi could be found, the accused led the officer and several villagers to a location roughly one hundred yards from where the corpse was lying. At that place they recovered strands of hair that were stained with blood. The hair strands resembled the hair that would be found on a female’s head, and a later examination by a chemical expert confirmed that the hair was stained with human blood and was morphologically consistent with female scalp hair. Subsequent investigations carried out by two different Sub-Inspectors of Police resulted in the accused being sent up for trial. A first-class magistrate conducted an inquiry, and at the conclusion of that inquiry committed the accused for trial by the Court of Session.

In this case the appellant asserted that he had been falsely implicated. He categorically denied that he had killed Baisakhi near the jungle at Amtis Chua hill and also denied having made any extra-judicial confession to Dalpat Sai, Krishna Chandra Singh and Praduman Singh. He further repudiated the allegation that a blood-stained weapon had been discovered in his house by the Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police, and he denied that he was absent from his village or that he was found in the house of his sister’s husband in the village of Karmapani. The learned Additional Judicial Commissioner, as well as the High Court, correctly observed that the case against the appellant was founded on two pillars: (a) circumstantial evidence and (b) the extra-judicial confession alleged to have been made by the appellant. Both the courts below held that the confession was voluntarily given and that it was not obtained through any inducement, threat or promise relating to the charge, and therefore it did not attract the provisions of section 24 of the Evidence Act. They also concluded that, although the appellant later repudiated the confession, it was sufficiently corroborated by the surrounding circumstantial evidence. In the view of those courts, the confession together with the circumstantial evidence led to only one reasonable inference, namely that the appellant had killed the child Baisakhi in the hope of obtaining some money. It is well settled that, in an appeal filed by special leave under article 136 of the Constitution, the appellant is not ordinarily permitted to dispute findings of fact or to seek interference with concurrent findings of fact, unless such findings are tainted by errors of law or are so manifestly contrary to established principles as to amount to a miscarriage of justice. Counsel for the appellant advanced three principal submissions. First, he contended that the extra-judicial confession attributed to the appellant was not admissible as evidence. Second, he argued that even if the confession were admissible, its truth could not be guaranteed. Third, he maintained that the lower courts, in relying on circumstantial evidence, had depended upon inadmissible testimony, specifically the statements of Aghani, to establish one of the material circumstances—that the appellant was last seen with Baisakhi before her murder. He further contended that the remaining circumstances—namely the recovery of the blood-stained “balua”, the blood-stained hair, and the appellant’s absence from the village on Wednesday—did not, by themselves, complete the evidential chain nor were they inconsistent with any hypothesis other than the appellant’s guilt. Accordingly, he submitted that the courts below had departed from the well-established principle that the circumstances proved against an accused must be of such a character as to be consistent only with his guilt and inconsistent with any reasonable hypothesis of innocence.

The Court first noted that it was not necessary to revisit the lower courts’ finding that Baisakhi had been killed sometime between the 7th and 8th of May 1957 and that the headless corpse discovered on the 8th of May 1957 had been correctly identified as that of the girl named Baisakhi. No party had challenged those factual conclusions before the Supreme Court. The post-mortem examination of the body had been conducted on 11 May 1957. The medical officer reported three ante-mortem injuries: a complete severance of the head from the neck, an incised wound on the left shoulder and an incised wound on the left upper arm. From this evidence the Court observed that the victim had been brutally slain. The identification of the headless body rested on a very solid basis, including the girl's clothing, a distinctive ring, beads and other personal effects that had been matched to Baisakhi. Having established that the murder of Baisakhi was a factual certainty, the lower courts correctly turned their attention to the principal issue in the case – whether the appellant was the person responsible for that murder. The Court then turned to the submissions made on behalf of the appellant. At the outset, the Court agreed with the appellant’s counsel that the statements of Aghani, who had died a few months after the incident before any formal recording could be made, could not be admitted as evidence under either section 32 or section 33 of the Indian Evidence Act. Section 33 was inapplicable because Aghani had made no statements in a judicial proceeding nor before any person authorized by law to take evidence. The only potentially relevant provision of section 32 was clause (1), which pertains to statements made by a person concerning the cause of his own death or the circumstances of the transaction that caused his death. The Court found that Aghani’s statements concerned the death of her sister and bore no relation to the cause or circumstances of her own death. Consequently, the Court held that Aghani’s statements did not fall within the ambit of section 32(1). Moreover, the State’s counsel had conceded that section 32(1) was inapplicable to Aghani’s remarks. With Aghani’s statements excluded, the Court examined what remaining evidence existed against the appellant. The first piece was the extra-judicial confession attributed to the appellant. In addition, the lower courts had identified several other circumstances that they considered clearly established: (a) the recovery of a blood-stained “balua” from a room belonging to the appellant, and (b) the recovery of blood-stained material, the details of which continue in the subsequent portion of the judgment.

In the material before the Court, the prosecution relied on three principal adverse facts. First, the investigators recovered strands of hair from a location that the appellant himself had indicated. Second, the appellant disappeared from his village immediately after the murder and was later apprehended in the village of Karmapani under the circumstances described by Maheshwar Sai, who was recorded as witness 6. Third, the appellant entirely denied that any blood-stained “balua” had been recovered and also denied his own arrest in Karmapani. In addition to these points, the case turned on an extra-judicial confession allegedly made by the appellant. Two questions therefore arose: whether the confession was given voluntarily, and if it was, whether it was true. The appellant subsequently repudiated the confession, claiming that he had never made such a statement. The Court, however, held that it was unnecessary to entertain the abstract issue of whether a conviction could rest on a confession that is later found to be voluntary and true. Instead, the Court noted the general principle that courts ordinarily require some material corroboration of a confessional statement, that is, evidence that links the accused to the crime. Consequently, the principal issue for determination was whether the circumstances proved against the appellant—namely the hair, the disappearance, the denial of the balua and of his arrest—provided sufficient corroboration to support the confessional statement, assuming that the confession could be deemed voluntary and truthful. The Court first examined the voluntariness of the confession. Section 24 of the Evidence Act declares a confession irrelevant if it appears to have been induced by any inducement, threat, or promise related to the charge, coming from a person in authority and sufficient to lead the accused to believe that making the confession would obtain an advantage or avoid a temporal evil in the proceedings. The counsel for the State, Mr Iyengar, referred to the testimony of three local officials—Dalpat Sai (witness 4), Krishna Chandra Singh (witness 7) and Praduman Singh (witness 13)—who held the positions of Mukhia, Sarpanch and Panch respectively in the Gram Panchayat. The Court accepted that, under the Bihar Panchayat Raj Act (Bihar VIII of 1948), these three individuals qualified as “persons in authority” within the meaning of Section 24.

The remaining inquiry, therefore, was whether any circumstance indicated that the appellant’s confession had been obtained by an inducement, threat, or promise emanating from any of those three authorities, and whether such influence was sufficient to give the appellant a reasonable belief that the confession would confer a benefit or prevent a disadvantage in the criminal proceedings. The Court examined the evidence presented by the three witnesses and found no indication of any such inducement, threat or promise. Accordingly, the lower courts had categorically concluded that the confession was not the product of any improper influence. The Court affirmed that conclusion, observing that the absence of coercive pressure from persons in authority meant that the voluntariness of the confession could not be doubted on that ground. The focus thus returned to the question of corroboration, where the hair, the appellant’s flight, the denial of the balua and the circumstances of his arrest constituted the material against him. The Court indicated that these facts would be evaluated to determine whether they sufficiently supported the confessional statement, should it be accepted as voluntary and true.

In response to the question of whether the appellant’s confession had been obtained by any inducement, threat or promise, the Court answered in the negative. It examined the testimony of the three witnesses previously identified, namely Dalpat Sai (P.W. 4), Krishna Chandra Singh (P.W. 7) and Praduman Singh (P.W. 13). The combined evidence established that the appellant was taken to the residence of Dalpat Sai at approximately ten o’clock in the morning on Thursday, 9 May 1957. Dalpat Sai testified that the appellant was questioned for about two hours, although his own statement clarified that the questioning was not conducted continuously for the full two-hour period. According to the record, the appellant, identified as Ratan, was offered some food and, after a brief interval of silence, he stated that he had killed the girl because the contractor constructing the bridge over the Lurki River had promised to pay a sum of Rs 80 for a human head. After reviewing the evidence of the three witnesses who corroborated this extra-judicial confession, the Court arrived at the same conclusion that the lower courts had reached.

The counsel for the appellant referred the Court to observations made by Cave in The Queen v. Thompson(1). In that case, a prisoner faced trial for embezzling company funds. The trial evidence showed that, after being accused by the company’s Chairman, the prisoner admitted to taking the money. The Chairman testified that no threat or promise was made at the time of the confession, but he had said to the prisoner’s brother, “It will be the right thing for your brother to make a statement.” The court inferred that the prisoner was aware of the Chairman’s remark to his brother when he confessed. In those circumstances, the learned judge stated, “I prefer to put my judgment on the ground that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove, in case of doubt, that the prisoner's statement was free and voluntary, and that they did not discharge themselves of this obligation.” He further observed that “there were always reasons to suspect those confessions which were supposed to be the offspring of penitence and remorse, and which nevertheless were repudiated by the prisoner at the trial.”

The Court noted that, although the appellant in the present matter denied having made the earlier confession, the circumstances present in Thompson were absent here. Specifically, there was no statement analogous to the Chairman’s remark to the brother. It was acknowledged that the appellant had been escorted back from the village of Karmapani by members of the village volunteer force and was then taken before the village authorities before whom he made his confession. The evidence, however, did not indicate any threat, promise or inducement. The sole point raised by the appellant’s counsel was that approximately two to three hours elapsed from the moment the appellant was brought to the

In this case the Court observed that the time taken for the appellant to travel from the house of the mukhia to the point at which he delivered his confessional statement was about two to three hours. Counsel for the appellant, Mr. Iyengar, cited the decision in In re Kataru Chinna Papiah (2), in which a Superintendent of Police interrogated an accused for four hours during the night (see (1) (1893) 2 Q. B. 12, 18) and then for a further two hours the following morning (see (2) A.I.R. 1940 Mad. 136). The Court noted that the judgment in that case identified a clear breach of the rules governing police interrogation. The Court pointed out that no such prolonged questioning occurred in the present matter, and therefore the precedent was inapplicable. Mr. Iyengar also referred the Court to the decision in Hashmat Khan v. The Crown (1). The Court explained that that authority did not assist the appellant’s argument because it held that a mere possibility of inducement does not suffice to invoke section 24 of the Evidence Act; rather, the confession must be shown to have been obtained as a result of an inducement offered by a person in authority. In Hashmat Khan the accused had been told that it would be better for him to tell the truth, and that statement was held to constitute an inducement within the meaning of section 24 of the Indian Evidence Act. Turning to the substance of the appellant’s confession, the Court found no material indicating that the statement contained any false or inaccurate content. The prosecution, the Court observed, had presented no evidence that any contractor involved in constructing the bridge over the Lurki River, or any contractor at all, had offered a sum of Rs 80 for a human head. The Court stated that, in the ordinary course of events, it would be unreasonable to expect a contractor to admit such an offer, and the prosecution could not be required to produce evidence of an offer that is, by its very nature, unlikely to be disclosed. The Court further remarked that, under normal circumstances, no one solicits a human head for the purpose of building a bridge, nor would anyone ordinarily accept such an offer even if it were made. However, the Court cautioned that the present case involved aboriginal persons who remain steeped in superstition. The Court found it noteworthy that Maheshwar Sai, identified as witness 6, testified that when the appellant was taken into custody in the village of Karmapani, the authorities did not inquire into the reasons for his arrest; instead, they offered him Rs 20 and a he-goat and implored him to secure his release, as recorded in (1) (1934) I.L.R. 15 Lah. 856. The Court held that, if Maheshwar Sai’s testimony is correct, the appellant’s statement was made voluntarily and was not the product of any interrogation. Consequently, the Court concluded that the reference to an alleged inducement does not merit further consideration.

The Court observed that the offer of Rs. 80 for a human head mentioned in the appellant’s confessional statement does not automatically render that statement unreliable. It noted that the recovery of a blood-stained “balua” – although the source of the blood could not be identified because the material had disintegrated – and the recovery of blood-stained strands of female hair from the location indicated by the appellant are facts that have been clearly proved against him. While these facts alone may not suffice to establish that the appellant was the murderer, the Court held that they nevertheless lend strong support to the confessional statement, providing a type of assurance that links the appellant to the crime. The Court emphasized that the confession must be read together with the surrounding circumstances. It further pointed out that shortly after the murder the appellant left his village, and when he was later apprehended in another village his behaviour suggested a guilty mind. In addition, the appellant has wholly denied that any blood-stained “balua” was ever recovered from his house and has denied having fled the village after the murder. The Court expressed regret that the learned Additional Judicial Commissioner did not invite the appellant to explain the recovery of the blood-stained female hair, describing this as an important omission. The Court also highlighted the Commissioner’s failure to comply with the provisions of Section 287 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, noting that the record of the accused’s examination before the Committing Magistrate does not appear to have been produced by the prosecution, as no such statement is found in the printed paper-book. Nevertheless, the Court was satisfied that no prejudice resulted from this lapse. It further observed that the Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police, who testified about the recovery of the blood-stained hair from the place pointed out by the appellant, was not subjected to cross-examination on that point. The appellant’s defence consisted of an outright denial, and even if the issue of the recovered hair had been raised before him, the Court was convinced that he would have denied the recovery as having occurred at the location he identified. In sum, the Court saw no basis to depart from the lower courts’ finding that the confessional statement was made voluntarily and was admissible, and it found no reason to doubt its truth. The Court concluded that the circumstances clearly proved against the appellant, even when the statements of Aghani are excluded, provide sufficient corroboration to support the confession.

In the case, the Court observed that the confession of the appellant, even though the appellant later repudiated it, together with the corroborative material, was of a character that linked the appellant to the homicide of the child known as Baisakhi. The Court explained that when the confession is read alongside the surrounding circumstantial evidence, the only logical conclusion is that the appellant was responsible for the killing of the child Baisakhi during the period of May seventh to May eighth, 1957, and that the motive appeared to be an expectation of obtaining some monetary benefit. The Court noted that it could not determine with certainty whether the anticipated money was actually obtained by the appellant, and that this point lay beyond the scope of the evidence. The Court further recorded that although the head of the deceased child was never recovered, there was no doubt that the body that had been found corresponded to the child Baisakhi, as established by the identification procedures. Regarding the punishment that had been imposed, the Court stated that, given the particular circumstances surrounding the killing of the child Baisakhi, there was no justification for altering the sentence in the present proceedings. Consequently, the Court concluded that the appeal lacked any merit and therefore had to be rejected, and the appeal was dismissed.