Charan Singh 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: Not extracted

Decision Date: 14 May, 1959

Coram: S.K. Das, A.K. Sarkar, K. Subba Rao

In the matter titled Charan Singh versus The State of Uttar Pradesh, decided on 14 May 1959, the Supreme Court heard the appeal filed by Charan Singh, who had earlier been convicted by the Sessions Judge of Mathura. That judge had found the appellant guilty of murdering a young girl named Sarjiti, who was reported to be between ten and twelve years of age, and had sentenced him to death. Additionally, the appellant faced a separate charge under Section 380 of the Indian Penal Code for the alleged theft of ornaments, but the trial court acquitted him of that offence. Following the conviction, the case was referred to the High Court of Allahabad for confirmation of the death sentence, and the appellant also lodged an appeal. The Allahabad High Court, by its judgment dated 29 July 1958, dismissed the appeal, accepted the reference, and upheld both the conviction and the death penalty. Subsequently, Charan Singh applied for special leave to appeal to this Court, and on 15 December 1958, special leave was granted. The present appeal is therefore filed in accordance with that permission, seeking a review of the conclusions reached by the lower courts.

The victim, Sarjiti, was the daughter of Atar Singh by his first wife. Atar Singh resided in the village of Anta-ki-Garhi, which fell under the Sadabad police station in the Mathura district. After the death of his first wife, Atar married Ram Siri, who was the sister of his first wife. By his second marriage Atar Singh had two young children, one aged three years and the other one year. The appellant, Charan Singh, was also a resident of the same village and lived in close proximity to Atar Singh. According to the prosecution, Charan Singh had earlier been employed by Atar Singh in the manufacture of “ghungras,” small bell-like ornaments traditionally worn on the ankles. When Atar Singh discontinued this business, Charan Singh lost his employment. The prosecution further alleged that on the day before the murder, Charan Singh entered Atar Singh’s house in the latter’s absence and behaved in a disrespectful manner toward Ram Siri, an incident that was alleged to have offended both Ram Siri and Sarjiti. Both women reportedly threatened to report Charan Singh’s conduct to Atar Singh. It was alleged that Charan Singh threatened Sarjiti, telling her that she would be killed if she complained about his behaviour. When Atar Singh returned, a complaint was lodged, and he visited Charan Singh’s house to inquire about the matter. Charan Singh denied any wrongdoing, and no further action occurred on that day. On the morning of 20 November 1957, Atar Singh went to his fields early, while Ram Siri left the house with her two small children to prepare cow-dung cakes, leaving Sarjiti alone inside. The prosecution case states that at about eight or nine o’clock in the morning, Charan Singh entered the house. He was described as wearing a dhoti and a shirt and carrying something wrapped in a cloth under his arm. He was subsequently seen leaving the house wearing only a dhoti and a vest, with the shirt no longer on his person.

On the day that formed the basis of the prosecution case, the appellant is described as having gone into the house of Atar Singh while wearing a dhoti and a shirt. He is said to have been carrying an object beneath his arm that was wrapped in a piece of cloth. Shortly thereafter he was observed emerging from the same house, but at that time he was wearing only a dhoti and a vest and no longer had the shirt on his person. At approximately nine or nine-thirty in the morning, Ram Siri returned to the house and called out for Sarjiti, but received no answer. Because she could not locate Sarjiti, Ram Siri proceeded to the residence of Chandan Singh, who is the brother of her husband, and informed Chandan’s wife that Sarjiti had disappeared and that she intended to search for her elsewhere in the village. Later, at about eleven-thirty in the morning, Atar Singh returned to his house together with his brother. Upon entering one of the rooms, Atar Singh observed that a box was left open and that several ornaments that had been kept inside were missing. He also found a quantity of “bhoosa,” which is the husk of grain, scattered on the floor of the same room, and near this grain husk there were visible stains of blood. When Atar Singh cleared away the bhoosa, he discovered the dead body of his child, Sarjiti, lying on the floor.

Near the corpse the investigators recovered a shirt that, according to the prosecution, had belonged to the appellant and that the appellant had been seen wearing when he entered the house earlier that morning. In addition, a “gandasa,” a large chopping instrument used for cutting fodder, was found close to the body. Both the shirt and the gandasa were reported to be stained with human blood, and the gandasa was also alleged to have been the appellant’s own tool. The alarm raised by Atar Singh summoned many villagers to the scene, and several of those villagers identified the shirt and the gandasa as belonging to the appellant. Further prosecution witnesses later testified that they had seen the appellant enter Atar Singh’s house in the early morning and later leave it in the manner previously described. At roughly three-thirty in the afternoon, Atar Singh travelled six miles to the nearest police station and lodged his first information about the incident. The investigating police officer thereafter visited the village, retrieved the blood-stained shirt and gandasa, and sent them to the Chemical Examiner and the Serologist, who confirmed the presence of human blood on both items. A post-mortem examination of Sarjiti’s body showed that she had been hacked to death, sustaining eight incised wounds, some of which had fractured the occipital, temporal and parietal bones, leaving the vault of the head open with brain matter extruding. The examination also revealed approximately six ounces of “dalia” in her stomach, indicating that she had died shortly after consuming her morning breakfast. The appellant’s defence asserted that he had been falsely implicated out of personal enmity. It was further suggested on his behalf that Mukhia, one of the prosecution witnesses, had an illicit relationship with Ram Siri, that Sarjiti had objected to this relationship, and that Mukhia and Ram Siri might therefore have been responsible for Sarjiti’s murder.

In this case the accused offered two separate lines of defence. The first line suggested that the prosecution was trying to place the murder on the accused falsely. The second line explained that a dispute had arisen between Atar Singh and several villagers on one side and the accused on the other concerning the tethering of bullocks in front of the accused’s house. According to the accused, some villagers had slapped him, and later in the evening Puran, who was the nephew of a village elder named Mukhia, informed the accused that he had been summoned by Puran’s grandfather. The accused refused to obey the summons, but after noticing that a few police constables were present at Mukhia’s house, he left the village on a bicycle and travelled to Mathura. On 20 November 1957, while in Mathura, the accused deposited a written petition in the collection box kept at the residence of the Superintendent of Police and also lodged a complaint before the Sub-divisional Magistrate.

During the trial, a defence witness identified as Bhagwan Singh, labelled defence witness No 1, testified that he had drafted the petition that was placed in the Superintendent’s box. The petition, which was entered into evidence, bore the date 20 November 1957, but an endorsement on the document indicated that it was actually discovered in the box on 22 November 1957. The accused further asserted that upon learning of the case filed against him, he voluntarily surrendered to the authorities on 23 November 1957. He consistently denied having entered Atar Singh’s house on 20 November 1957, denied that he had killed the child Sarjiti, and denied that the blood-stained shirt and chopper recovered near the body belonged to him.

The record shows that the prosecution’s case was built entirely on circumstantial evidence; no eyewitness testified to having seen the accused commit the killing of Sarjiti. Both the Sessions Judge and the High Court rejected the accused’s defence and held that the circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution was credible and sufficient to demonstrate the accused’s guilt. The matter before the Supreme Court was whether the lower courts were correct in concluding that the circumstantial evidence established the accused’s culpability.

Counsel for the accused argued that even if the circumstantial evidence established by the prosecution were accepted as true, it did not eliminate the possibility that another person, specifically the thief who had stolen the ornaments, could have been responsible for Sarjiti’s death. This formed one strand of the appellant’s argument. A second strand contended that the prosecution’s evidence linking the accused to the crime scene—namely, the claim that the accused entered Sarjiti’s house on the morning of 20 November 1957 and emerged shortly thereafter, and the assertion that the blood-stained shirt and chopper found near the dead body belonged to the accused—was unreliable. The defence maintained that if these links in the chain of circumstances were found to be weak or broken, the prosecution’s case would fail.

In this appeal the appellant raised two principal questions. First, the appellant contended that even if the prosecution’s circumstantial evidence were accepted as correct, it would not eliminate the possibility that another person – specifically the thief who had taken the ornaments – might have been responsible for Sarjiti’s death. Second, the appellant asserted that the evidence establishing his presence in Sarjiti’s house on the morning of 20 November 1957, as well as the identification of the blood-stained shirt and the chopper found near the body as belonging to him, was unreliable; consequently, if any link in this chain of circumstances were missing, the prosecution’s case should fail. The Court reiterated the well-settled principle that when guilt is to be inferred from circumstantial evidence, the facts forming the basis of that inference must first be fully established and must be consistent only with the hypothesis of the accused’s guilt. In other words, the chain of circumstances must be so complete that it reasonably excludes every alternative explanation except the one the prosecution seeks to prove. This principle has been articulated in authorities such as Hanumant v. State of Madhya Pradesh and Deonandan Mishra v. State of Bihar. The Court also warned, citing Reg. v. Hodge (1838) 2 Lewin 227, that in such cases conjecture or suspicion may supplant legal proof and that there is a tendency for the mind to force disparate facts into a convenient whole. While the Court generally refrains from reassessing evidence already examined by lower courts, it permitted the appellant’s counsel to comment on the portion of the prosecution’s testimony that related to whether the alleged circumstances had indeed been fully established. After reviewing the material, the Court concluded that the circumstances alleged against the appellant were fully established and left no doubt about their existence.

The High Court summarized the facts proved against the appellant as follows: first, the appellant was observed entering the house of Atar Singh at approximately 8 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. on 20 November 1957, the very morning when the murder occurred; second, at the time of entry he was wearing a shirt identified as Exhibit 2, but when he emerged he was wearing a vest and no shirt; third, the shirt described as Exhibit 2, which bore human blood stains, was discovered near Sarjiti’s dead body; fourth, upon entering Atar Singh’s house the appellant was seen carrying an object under his arm wrapped in a cloth, yet when he left he possessed nothing in his hands or under his arm, and subsequently a blood-stained chopper belonging to the appellant was found close to the corpse; and fifth, both the shirt and the chopper were stained with human blood. The Court then posed the question of whether these fully established circumstances satisfied the recognized tests for the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence. Specifically, it examined whether the facts were consistent only with the hypothesis of the appellant’s guilt and whether the chain of events was complete enough to preclude any reasonable inference of the appellant’s innocence. The Court ultimately held that the circumstantial evidence met the necessary criteria.

The Court considered whether the circumstantial evidence that had been referred to earlier met the well-recognised standards for sufficiency. It asked whether the facts were consistent solely with the hypothesis that the appellant was guilty and whether the chain of circumstances was so complete as to preclude any reasonable inference of the appellant’s innocence. In the Court’s view, the circumstantial evidence in the present case satisfied the necessary tests. Counsel for the appellant drew attention to the fact that the appellant had been acquitted of the theft charge and suggested that the person who stole the ornaments might also have committed the murder of Sarjiti. The Court was unable to accept that suggestion. The learned Sessions Judge had not acquitted the appellant on the ground that another person had committed the theft; rather, he acquitted the appellant of theft because, in his opinion, the circumstantial material did not prove the theft, although the same material established the murder. Unless the record shows that the murder and the theft occurred at different times, the acquittal on the theft charge does not create any doubt about the correctness of the conviction for murder. The proposition that a stranger or a thief other than the appellant could have carried out the murder is wholly inconsistent with the discovery of a blood-stained shirt and a blood-stained chopper, both identified as belonging to the appellant, near the dead body. Counsel for the appellant did not seek acceptance of the alibi that the appellant was away at Mathura on 20 November 1957. The witness examined on the appellant’s behalf had been considered by both the learned Sessions Judge and the High Court. The High Court correctly noted that the petition allegedly filed by the appellant in the Superintendent of Police’s box at Mathura was found on 22 November 1957, even though the petition itself was dated 20 November 1957. Consequently, the petition did not establish the alibi that the appellant claimed before the lower courts. For the reasons set out above, the Court found no satisfactory ground to interfere with either the conviction or the sentence imposed on the appellant. The murder was a cold-blooded killing of a defenceless child and no mitigating circumstances were identified. Accordingly, the appeal was dismissed.