Ajendra Nath vs State Of Madhya Pradesh

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

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Criminal Appeal No. 226 of 1960

Decision Date: 23 April 1963

Coram: Raghubar Dayal, J.R. Mudholkar

In this case, the Court recorded that the petition was filed by Ajendra Nath against the State of Madhya Pradesh and that the judgment was delivered on 23 April 1963 by a bench consisting of Justice Raghubar Dayal and Justice J.R. Mudholkar. The citation of the decision was reported as 1964 AIR 170 and 1964 SCR (3) 289. The matter concerned an offence under the Criminal Trial Act dealing with property recovered that was not proved to be stolen property, an acquittal by a Sessions Judge, a State appeal against that acquittal, the reversal of the finding by the High Court, and the question of whether the High Court could record its own findings on the issue of stolen property under Sections 120‑B, 379 and 414 of the Indian Penal Code.

The factual background as set out in the headnote described that five bales containing woollen shawls and mufflers were dispatched from Kanpur by the British India Corporation Ltd., and an additional bale was sent from Haimanpur to Kanpur; all of these were loaded onto a wagon at Itarsi railway station. The lock of the wagon was discovered broken at Pandhurna railway station, and on inspection at Nagpur the aforementioned bales were found missing. A search of the house of a person named Gopinath yielded certain articles, including torn labels, and on the same day the appellant together with several other individuals emerged from Gopinath’s locked house and were taken to the police station. At the appellant’s request, the police recovered woollen shawls, mufflers, bed‑sheets and several implements used for house breaking from various locations within that house.

Following investigation, six persons, including the appellant, were tried before a Magistrate on several charges under Sections 120‑B, 379 and 414 of the Indian Penal Code, and all were convicted except one named Birendra Nath. On appeal, the Additional Sessions Judge acquitted all the convicted persons. The State then appealed the acquittal of Gopinath and the appellant; the High Court allowed the appeal only against the appellant with respect to the offence under Section 414 of the Indian Penal Code. By special leave, the Supreme Court held that the acquittal of the other accused on the ground that the recovered property had not been proved to be stolen did not prevent the State from appealing the appellant’s acquittal where better evidence existed against him. The Court further held that the State could challenge the Additional Sessions Judge’s finding that the property was not stolen, and that the High Court was competent to make its own determination on that question. Moreover, the Court explained that conviction under Section 414 does not require another person to be traced and convicted for theft; it is sufficient for the prosecution to prove that the recovered property was stolen and that the appellant assisted in its concealment and disposal. The circumstances of recovery in the present case, according to the Court, sufficiently demonstrated the appellant’s assistance in concealing stolen property, thereby establishing the offence under Section 414.

The Court observed that the appellant had indeed committed the offence punishable under section 414 of the Indian Penal Code and consequently ordered that the appeal be dismissed. The criminal appeal, numbered 226 of 1960, was filed by special leave against the judgment and order dated 28 July 1960 of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in criminal appeal number 385 of 1959. Counsel for the appellant appeared, as did counsel for the respondent. The judgment was pronounced on 23 April 1963 by Justice RaghuBar Dayal.

The matter before the Court concerned the reversal, on the State’s appeal, of an order of the Additional Sessions Judge, Hoshangabad, who had originally acquitted the appellant and convicted him of an offence under section 414 of the Indian Penal Code. The factual background involved five bales containing woollen shawls and mufflers dispatched from the British India Corporation Limited, Kanpur Woollen Mills Branch, Kanpur, together with an additional bale sent from Haimanpur to Kanpur. These bales were loaded onto a wagon identified as Wagoa No. C.R. 325 at Itarsi railway station on 18 September 1957. The wagon’s lock was discovered broken at Pandhurna railway station at approximately one o’clock in the morning on 20 September 1957, and a check at Nagpur revealed that the bales were missing.

One of the bales dispatched from Kanpur was recovered the following morning lying near the railway line between the stations Jaulkheda and Multai. On 23 September 1957, a search of the residence of Gopi Nath at Multai yielded several articles, including torn labels, which were seized. On the same day, police apprehended the appellant together with several other individuals as they emerged from Gopi Nath’s locked house at Betul. These persons were taken to the police station, where the appellant made a statement indicating his willingness to disclose the location of the stolen property. Acting on his information, police recovered from various parts of the house woollen shawls, mufflers, bed‑sheets and certain implements used for house breaking. These recoveries were effected on 23 and 24 September.

Following investigation, six persons were indicted before the Magistrate’s Court. The appellant, Ajendra Nath, faced charges under sections 120‑B, 379 and 414 of the Indian Penal Code. Babu Ram was charged under sections 120‑B and 379, Ram Prasad and Gyarsi under section 120‑B read with section 879, Gopi Nath under section 120‑B read with section 414, and Birendranath under section 414. The learned Magistrate acquitted Birendranath but convicted the remaining accused under the conspiracy provision of section 120‑B together with section 379, except that Gopi Nath was convicted under section 120‑B read with section 414. The appellant, Ajendra Nath, was also convicted under section 414. On appeal, the Additional Sessions Judge at Hoshangabad acquitted all those previously convicted, holding that the recovered property had not been proved to be stolen and that the alleged conspiracy was not established. The State appealed the acquittals of Gopi Nath and Ajendra Nath. The High Court dismissed the appeal against Gopi Nath and proceeded to consider the appeal against Ajendra Nath.

The High Court had dismissed the appeal against Ajendra Nath regarding the offence of conspiracy, but it had allowed the appeal concerning the offence under section 414 of the Indian Penal Code. Ajendra Nath, the appellant, filed the present appeal against that order. He did not dispute that various articles had been recovered from Gopi Nath’s house at Betul at his request, nor did he claim ownership of the property; instead, he asserted that the recovered items were not stolen property. The appellant’s principal argument before this Court was that the recovered articles had not been proved to be stolen. The items in question were said to have been dispatched by the British India Corporation Ltd., Kanpur Woollen Mills Branch, Kanpur, and bed‑sheets supplied by the firm V.S.N.C. Narsingha Chettiar, which conducts wholesale hand‑loom cloth business in Karur. The invoices attached to the four bales sent by Kanpur Woollen Mills listed the numbers of shawls and mufflers contained therein. A substantial quantity of those articles was later recovered: out of ninety‑five shawls and sixty‑three mufflers, eighty shawls and forty‑three mufflers had been found, and of ten pairs of stolen bed‑sheets, eight pairs were recovered. The High Court considered several circumstances in concluding that the recovered property was stolen, namely the lack of a satisfactory explanation for the presence of such a large quantity of articles resembling those dispatched by Kanpur Woollen Mills or by the Karur firm, the swift recovery of the articles within a few days of the theft, the existence of silk and paper labels of Kanpur Woollen Mills on most of the recovered shawls and mufflers, and certain manuscript markings on the bed‑sheet labels made by P.W. 24 Krishnamurthi, the brother of P.W. 16 Venkat Raman, who is engaged in the Karur business. The Court held that these circumstances were sufficient to justify the finding that the recovered property was indeed stolen. Nevertheless, the appellant maintained that the evidence of Kunzru, P.W. 10, did not definitively show that the shawls and mufflers recovered were manufactured by Kanpur Woollen Mills and that they had been dispatched in the bales later stolen. Kunzru’s testimony fell short of establishing that the recovered shawls and mufflers originated from the mills; he had not identified the specific recovered items as those produced by the mills. Moreover, he had not been shown the entire collection of recovered shawls and mufflers. He had only been presented, by the Police Inspector of the Government Railway Police, with two shawls and two mufflers, which were examined by a textile expert. Based on the expert’s report, Kunzru issued a certificate stating that those examined items appeared to have been manufactured by the Kanpur Woollen Mills. The textile expert, however, had not been examined in Court, and consequently Kunzru’s statement alone was deemed insufficient to establish that the recovered shawls and mufflers were the products of the Kanpur Woollen Mills.

In this case the Court observed that although the testimony of Kunzru had not positively identified the recovered shawls and mufflers as having been made by the Kanpur Woollen Mills, the presence of sewn silk labels from the mills on the majority of the items and the attachment of paper labels on a substantial number of them removed any doubt that the articles originated from those mills. The Court noted that no suggestion had been made that such labels might have been affixed for a deceptive purpose, and therefore affirmed the finding that the shawls and mufflers were indeed the manufacture of the Kanpur Woollen Mills. The appellant contended that the evidence did not establish that the shawls and mufflers had been placed in the specific bales dispatched from the mills, and argued that the gate passes and invoices produced by Kunzru were untested because the persons who had prepared those documents had not been examined. The Court, however, pointed out that Kunzru had produced the original gate passes and invoices, and that he was the salesman of the Kanpur Woollen Mills. During his cross‑examination, Kunzru’s credibility regarding the authenticity of the documents was not challenged, and there was no indication that the invoices and gate passes failed to accurately describe the articles contained in the identified bales, nor that the bales had not been dispatched in accordance with those passes. The Court also addressed the observation that five of the recovered shawls were violet in colour, a detail not mentioned in any of the invoices. While acknowledging that a misdescription in the invoices or a possible connection of the violet shawls to a different theft could be imagined, the Court stressed that the appellant had not claimed ownership of the violet shawls, and consequently the argument did not undermine the High Court’s conclusion that the recovered property was stolen. Turning to the question of the identity of the bed‑sheets, the Court considered the testimonies of witnesses 16 and 24. Witness 16 testified that he had supplied ten pairs of bed‑sheets to a customer who later disowned the bale, after which he instructed the station master at Ahimanpur to return the parcel to Karur. He identified the sheets as those dispatched by his firm and explained that firm labels were affixed to the goods before shipment. He further stated that his younger brother, Krishna Murti, had recorded the size, number and pattern on the sheets in his own handwriting while on vacation. Witness 24, identified as Krishna Murti, admitted that he had written certain labels on the bed‑sheets under his brother’s instructions and that he had not applied similar markings to any other sheets. He later clarified that such markings were made casually on the occasion.

On the question of the markings on the labels attached to the recovered bed‑sheets, the witness identified as P.W. 24 explained that on several occasions the Sub‑Inspector had asked him to write the size, pattern and other details on blank labels belonging to his shop. The learned Additional Sessions judge did not give weight to the statements of the witnesses and was of the view that the investigating officer might have obtained those markings on the labels of the recovered articles during the course of the investigation. The High Court, however, concluded that there was no reason to doubt the correctness of the witnesses’ statements and no reason to suspect that the writings on the labels were produced by the police during the investigation. No question was put to P.W. 24 concerning any police direction to write on the labels that were attached to the recovered articles. According to the witness, the police showed him labels bearing his own handwriting for the purpose of identification, and he recognized the handwriting as his own. The police used his writings on blank labels as a comparison tool. Consequently, the Court found no satisfactory ground to overturn the High Court’s finding that the bed‑sheets that had been recovered constituted stolen property.

The respondents also argued that the High Court should not have recorded a finding that the recovered property was stolen property because the Government had not appealed against the acquittal of the other co‑accused, whose acquittal was based on the finding that the recovered property had not been proved to be stolen. The Court rejected that argument, observing that the fact that the learned Additional Sessions judge had acquitted the other accused on the ground that the property was not proved to be stolen did not prevent the State from challenging that finding in the present appeal. The appellant faced a stronger evidential situation, and the State was therefore entitled to contest the correctness of the Additional Sessions judge’s finding regarding the nature of the property. The Court held that the High Court was free to make its own determination on whether the recovered articles were stolen property.

Finally, the respondents contended that even if the identity of the recovered articles as stolen property were established, no offence under section 414 of the Indian Penal Code could be made out against the appellant because the other accused had been acquitted and it was unclear whom the appellant had assisted in concealing the property. The Court explained that section 414 creates an offence for a person who voluntarily assists in stealing, disposing of or making away with property that he knows or has reason to believe to be stolen, and that it is not necessary for the assisting person to be linked to a conviction of the principal thief. The prosecution need only prove that the property recovered was stolen and that the appellant aided in its concealment or disposal. The circumstances of the recovery, including the deliberate division of the property into separate packets and its placement in various locations such as an iron safe and an underground cellar, supported the conclusion that the appellant had assisted in concealing the stolen property and therefore committed an offence under section 414. The Court consequently found no merit in the appeal and dismissed it.

The stolen property had been divided and stored in separate portions, and it was possible that the portion of the property that did not belong to a particular thief had been kept apart from the rest. The authorities later recovered the property from a number of distinct locations within the same residence. Among the locations from which the property was retrieved were an iron safe and an underground cellar. On the evening preceding the recovery, several individuals, the appellant among them, were observed exiting the back door of the house while its front door remained locked. The appellant was also aware of the location of the stolen items that were kept inside the house belonging to his maternal grandfather. A day before the property was seized, he made an attempt to sell a few mufflers that were part of the stolen goods. During the night, witnesses saw him arrive at the residence in a car accompanied by several other persons, and subsequently unload items resembling bales from the vehicle into the house. All of these circumstances, taken together, supported the conclusion that he had aided in concealing the stolen property and therefore had committed an offence punishable under section 414 of the Indian Penal Code. Consequently, the appellate court found no merit in the appeal and ordered its dismissal, thereby affirming the lower court’s decision.