Faddi vs The 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. 210 of 1963

Decision Date: 24 January 1964

Coram: Raghubar Dayal, M. Hidayatullah

In this case the matter was titled Faddi versus the State of Madhya Pradesh and the judgment was delivered on 24 January 1964 by a bench consisting of Justice Raghubar Dayal and Justice M Hidayatullah. The judgment was recorded by the author Justice Raghubar Dayal and the citation appears as 1964 AIR 1850, 1964 SCR (6) 312 with subsequent references in later reports. The dispute arose from a criminal appeal identified as Criminal Appeal No 210 of 1963, which was filed by special leave against the order dated 27 July 1963 of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, Gwalior Bench, confirming the conviction and death sentence imposed on the appellant under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code by the Additional Sessions Judge, Morena.

The factual background revealed that the appellant, identified as Faddi, had been charged with the murder of his step‑son. The investigation led the police to recover the corpse of the step‑son and to arrest three additional individuals alleged to be involved. Ultimately the investigation resulted in the filing of a First Information Report by the accused, and both the appellant and a second accused named Banwari were committed to trial for the murder. The principal issue on appeal concerned whether that First Information Report could be admitted as evidence. The appellant contended that the report should be excluded because it was not a confession and was not made to a police officer during the investigation, invoking sections 21 and 25 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 and section 162 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898. The Court examined the nature of the report, observing that it constituted an admission by the accused of facts relevant to the question of who committed the murder and whether the accused’s statements in court denying prosecution witnesses were truthful. The Court held that admissions are admissible under section 21 of the Evidence Act and that neither section 25 of that Act nor section 162 of the Code barred the report’s admissibility. The Court therefore rejected the contention that the report was inadmissible, distinguished the authorities cited by the appellant, and affirmed that the report could be proved against the accused.

After initially residing at Agra, Jaibai and Faddi later moved to Morena. Jaibai had a son named Gulab, who was eleven years old and lived with his paternal aunt Ramle in the village of Torkheda. Gulab had been residing at Ramle’s house since the month of Sawan in 1961. On 21 January 1963, Gulab’s body was recovered from a well in the village of Jarah. The body arrived at the mortuary in Morena at 5:15 p.m. on the same day. According to the post‑mortem report, the corpse had been dispatched from the scene of the incident at 1 p.m. Dr Nigam, who conducted the post‑mortem examination, observed a wound on Gulab’s skull and expressed the opinion that the boy died as a result of that injury within two or three days of the examination. The doctor testified that no water was found in the lungs, abdomen, larynx or middle ear, thereby excluding drowning as a cause of death. Following the investigation, the appellant Faddi and a man named Banwari were charged with Gulab’s murder. The course of the investigation was noteworthy. The police were unaware of any offence until 9 p.m. on 20 January 1963, when the appellant himself went to the police station at Saroichhola and lodged a first‑information‑report. In that report he stated that, upon peeping into a well near a peepul tree in Hadpai on the morning of 20 January 1962, he had found his son’s dead body lying in the well. In the same statement he recounted the events that led him to discover the corpse and implicated Ramle, Bhanta and a cyclist as the perpetrators of Gulab’s murder. This information directed the police to the well, resulting in the recovery of the body. By 26 January, the police had arrested the persons identified as the accused—Ramle, Bhanta, and the cyclist, who was later identified as Shyama. These three individuals remained in custody for a period ranging from eight to eleven days. On the same day, under the orders of the Superintendent of Police, the investigation was transferred to Circle Inspector Nazat Mohammed Khan, who succeeded Rajender Singh, the Station Officer of the Saraichhola police station. The Circle Inspector subsequently arrested Faddi on 27 January; the other arrested individuals were later released. Faddi escorted the Circle Inspector to a house and, after retrieving a pair of shorts belonging to Gulab, handed them over to the inspector. The prosecution later examined Ramle, Bhanta alias Dhanta, and Shyamlal as witnesses numbered 15, 4 and 5 respectively. The conviction of the appellant rested entirely on circumstantial evidence, as there was no direct proof that he had either thrown Gulab into the well or killed the boy before placing the body in the well. The trial court accepted the following circumstances: first, that Faddi had visited Ramle’s house around noon on 19 January 1962 and asked Ramle to send the boy with him.

In this case the factual sequence recorded by the trial court began with Gulab working in the fields at the time the events occurred. After the evening meal, the accused Faddi departed abruptly when a woman named Shyama arrived and conveyed a directive from Gulab’s mother to the villager Ramle, instructing that the boy should not be sent with anyone. Despite this instruction, Faddi seized Gulab forcibly from the fields and carried him away. The testimony also indicated that an individual named Banwari, who was later acquitted, was purported to have been present with Faddi at the moment of the forcible removal. Following that afternoon of 19 January, Gulab was not seen alive by any witness. His dead body was discovered on the forenoon of 21 January. When questioned, Faddi was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation of how he and the boy became separated. The investigation revealed that Faddi possessed knowledge of the precise location where Gulab’s corpse was lying, and his information guided the police to the site where the body was recovered. Faddi claimed that he had observed the corpse floating on the morning of 20 January; this claim was contradicted by the opinion of Dr. Nigam, who stated that a body would typically rise to the surface after approximately two days. Moreover, the witnesses who participated in the recovery testified that they did not see the corpse floating and that it could be retrieved only by the use of angles. The prosecution also relied on a confession made by the accused to a person named Jaibai and to two other witnesses, Jimipal and Sampatti, in which he admitted killing Gulab. In addition, a pair of shorts recovered from the appellant’s possession was identified as the garment worn by Gulab at the time he was taken away. The High Court, however, chose not to rely on the confession or on the recovered shorts, observing that the confession was inconsistent and unconvincing. Bhagwan Singh and Ramle testified that the deceased had been wearing the shorts when the appellant removed him, but Bhagwan Singh did not undergo a formal identification procedure, and the accused was never questioned about the shorts at the time of the removal. The High Court concluded that the remaining circumstantial circumstances were sufficient to establish that the appellant had committed the murder of Gulab, and consequently affirmed both the conviction and the sentence. Counsel for the appellant reviewed the entire evidentiary record and argued that the evidence was unreliable and should not have been admitted by the lower courts. The appellate judges considered this criticism and held that the lower courts had correctly assessed the evidence, rendering further discussion unnecessary. It should be noted that the appellant denied ever going to Ramle’s house in the village of Torkheda or forcibly taking Gulab away on the afternoon of 19 January, although he admitted having lodged a report and having assisted the police in recovering the dead body from the well using an angle. He further asserted that he filed the report under the advice of an unnamed individual.

Lalla Ram of Utampur neither explained why he claimed to have been tutored nor produced any evidence to support that allegation. In the report that the appellant filed, he admitted to the prosecution’s charge that he had forcibly taken Gulab away from the village of Torkheda. He then asserted that three persons—Ramle, Bhatta and Shyamlal—had threatened his life, removed the pyjama and half‑pant from Gulab’s body, and, after taking the boy with them, had remained seated on the well beside the peepul tree of Hadpai. The appellant said that he concealed himself nearby, heard a sound of something being thrown into the well, and that the three individuals subsequently fled. He further claimed that he stayed at that spot throughout the night and, when he looked into the well the following morning, saw the corpse of his son. Afterward, he travelled to Morena, consulted a Jabar Singh Vakil and a Chhotey Singh, and, on their advice, lodged the report. In that report he specifically accused Ramle, Bhatta and the cycle‑rider of killing his son Gulab by throwing him into the well. The report was described as a standard first‑information report lodged by an aggrieved person or on his behalf; it was not presented as a confessional statement by the appellant and it contained no admission that he himself had murdered the boy.

The learned Sessions Judge and the High Court examined the appellant’s statements in the report, which attempted to explain his separation from Gulab on the basis of the alleged conduct of Ramle and the others, and concluded that those statements were false. Their conclusion was justified because the burden of explaining Gulab’s disappearance rested on the appellant, while the prosecution’s evidence indicated that the appellant had taken Gulab with him. Moreover, the appellant denied having taken Gulab. The evidence on this point consisted of statements made by Ramle, Shyamlal and Bhagwan Singh, which the lower courts had accepted. The High Court also noted that the appellant appeared to know the location of the deceased’s body, as he had written in the report that the police went to the well in the village of Jarah and recovered the dead body. In court the appellant gave no explanation of how he learned of that fact. Consequently, the report was found to be untrue, especially in light of the appellant’s own conduct. The Court emphasized that if Gulab had indeed been forcibly removed by Ramle and the others, the appellant would ordinarily have acted promptly to rescue him rather than waste time by merely following the perpetrators. Even if he had been interested in pursuing them and had heard the sound of something being thrown inside the

In the present case, the appellant was observed remaining concealed at the well throughout the night after hearing a noise and seeing the individuals who had fled. The court noted that, under those circumstances, the appellant had no justification for staying hidden; rather, he should have promptly alerted others to the suspicious activity, especially because he could reasonably suspect that the persons he had seen were involved in wrongdoing against Gulab. The High Court also examined the appellant’s claim that he saw the dead body floating in the well on the morning of 20 January and found that assertion to be incorrect. Accordingly, the appellate court concluded that the appellant’s failure to report the observations and his false statement about the location of the body demonstrated an attempt to conceal essential facts related to the murder.

The appellant further argued that the first information report filed by the police should not have been admitted as evidence, relying on the decision reported in Nisar Ali v. State of U.P. The court evaluated this contention and determined that it lacked merit. The report was not a confession, nor was it a statement made to a police officer during the course of investigation; consequently, the provisions of Section 25 of the Evidence Act and Section 162 of the Code of Criminal Procedure did not preclude its admissibility. The report constituted an admission by the accused of certain factual matters that were directly relevant to the question of how and by whom Gulab’s murder was committed, as well as to the veracity of the appellant’s denial of the prosecution witnesses’ statements. Under Section 21 of the Evidence Act, admissions are admissible, and Section 17 defines an admission as any oral or documentary statement that suggests an inference as to any fact in issue or a relevant fact made by a person concerned. Section 21 further provides that such admissions may be proved against the maker. Illustrations to Section 21 confirm that an accused may be proved by his own admissions, notwithstanding the general rule against using a person’s own statements against him. The Privy Council, in Dal Singh v. King Emperor, had earlier held that first information reports are admissible as evidence when they are authenticated documents that are not confessions but rather informations or charges. The court therefore affirmed that the first information report in the present matter was proper evidence and could be relied upon to assist in determining the issues before the court.

The Court observed that the statement in question constituted proper evidence against the accused, yet it also noted that the statement differed in several respects from the testimony later given by Dal Singh in Court. The Sessions Judge treated the document as undermining Dal Singh’s defence and was required to choose between the prosecution’s version of events and the version presented by Dal Singh. Counsel for the appellant argued that the facts of the Dal Singh case were, in some respects, distinct from the facts of the present matter, but the Court held that any such distinction did not affect the issue of admissibility of the report. The report had been declared admissible because it was not a confession and because it assisted the Court in ascertaining the matters before it, as recorded in L. R. 44 1. A. 137. In the case of Nisar Ali, Kapur J., speaking for the Court, after summarising the facts, stated that an objection had been raised to the admissibility of a report because it had been prepared by a co‑accused. He explained that a first information report was not a substantive piece of evidence and could only be employed to corroborate the maker’s statement under section 157 of the Evidence Act or to contradict it under section 145 of that Act. He further observed that the report could not be used as evidence against the maker if the maker later became an accused, nor could it be used to corroborate or contradict the testimony of other witnesses. Consequently, in that case the report was held not to be evidence. The appellant relied on those observations to contend that his own report was inadmissible. While the wording “it cannot be used as evidence against the maker at the trial if he himself becomes accused” seemed to support the appellant’s position, the Court examined the context and the factual circumstances recorded in the case file. It found that the Sessions Judge had specifically ruled that the first information report lodged by a co‑accused who had been acquitted was inadmissible against Nisar Ali, and that the High Court had made no reference to that report in its judgment. The Court concluded that the observation pertained to a first information report that was, in essence, a confession by its maker. A confessional first information report, the Court noted, could not be used against its maker when he became an accused and could not be used against a co‑accused either. Moreover, the final sentence of the quoted passage revealed that the Court’s intention was to declare that the first information report filed by Qudratullah, the co‑accused, was not evidence against Nisar Ali. The Court clarified that it had not been called upon to decide whether a first information report that was not a confession could be used as an admission under section 21 of the Evidence Act or as a relevant statement under any other provision of that Act. The Court also observed that the Rajasthan High Court had interpreted the same observation in the same manner in State v. Balchand and related decisions.

The Court noted that the authorities cited by the learned counsel included the decision reported in [1957] S.C.R. 657, the judgment reported in (2) A.I.R. 1960 Raj 101 in State of Rajasthan v. Shiv Singh (1), and the ruling of the Allahabad High Court in Allahabad v. State (2). After considering those precedents, the Court held that the objection raised against the admissibility of the first information report filed by the appellant was untenable. Accordingly, the Court affirmed that the lower courts had correctly admitted the report into evidence and had utilised it properly in the proceedings. The Court further examined the factual findings recorded by the High Court and found them sufficient to support the conclusion that the appellant had committed the murder of the deceased, Gulab. Specifically, the appellant was identified as the last individual seen in the company of Gulab while Gulab was still alive, and the appellant possessed knowledge of the location of Gulab’s dead body. Moreover, the appellant had provided a false explanation regarding his knowledge of the body in the report he lodged, and he had failed to give any explanation before the trial Court as to how he had become separated from the deceased. In light of these observations, the Court concluded that the evidence established the appellant’s culpability for the homicide. Consequently, the Court dismissed the appeal and ordered that the appeal be rejected.