JUDGMENT 1. Shunker Bal Krishna, Assistant Station Master of Gomhoria on the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, and William Palmer, guard of a goods train, have been convicted of offences under sec. 304A of the Indian Penal Code and sec. 101 of the Indian Railway Act, 1890, and have been sentenced each to three months' rigorous imprisonment. They are held to have been criminally responsible for a collision between the 15 down passenger train from Sini and the 80 up goods train from Gomhoria, which resulted in 15 people including the engine driver of the goods train being killed and several others being wounded. The Bengal-Nagpur line is worked on the "line clear and caution message" system, no train being allowed to leave a station without a "line clear" certificate to the effect that the line is clear up to the next station. Such certificate is entered in a prescribed form and is in terms a copy of a telegram from the next station. The Assistant Station Master who was on duty during the small hours of the night and had been busy issuing tickets to passengers wrote out in the prescribed form book the following conditional line clear message, although he had received no message from Sini : "On arrival of No. 15 down passenger at Gomhoria, line will be clear for No. 80 up goods from Gomhoria to Sini." All the particulars required by rule were not filled in. There is no private number entered on it, and the time has not been filled in. Rule No. 18 of the prescribed rules lays down that no certificate shall be written out either in full, or in part, or signed, before it is required for use. The Assistant Station Master explains that he wrote the conditional line clear certificate in order to save time, as he would require to insert only a few words when the line clear message was actually received. It would appear that guard Palmer entered the Station Master's room in his absence, tore the imperfect certificate out of the book and without reading it appended his signature and passed it on to the driver and gave the signal for the train to start--all without the knowledge of Hal Krishna. The train started and soon came into collision with the passenger train from Sini which had started on receipt there of the line clear message from Gomhoria. 2. The train started and soon came into collision with the passenger train from Sini which had started on receipt there of the line clear message from Gomhoria. 2. Now the guard had disobeyed several standing rules. In the first place he had no business to enter the Station Master's room and without his permission take the certificate. He might only take it personally from his hands. In the next place he might not use it or pass it on to the driver without first satisfying himself that it was a line clear message with the private mark. Then he had no right to start the train without the Station Master's permission. Finally, the driver ought not to have started without examining the certificate and seeing that it was all in order. The guard has been rightly convicted and we have refused to interfere in his case, though we think it is greatly to he regretted that the Railway authorities placed such a young and unexperienced man (18 years of ago) in so responsible a position and without having him thoroughly instructed in his duties. The question we have to consider is whether the facts found can justify the conviction of Bal Krisnha either for causing death by doing a negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide or for endangering the safety of others by disobeying Rule 18 previously referred to. He never intended that the conditional certificate should be used in that state as a line clear message, nor could he have anticipated that the guard would remove it from the book in his absence and contrary to rule. Much less he could have anticipated that the guard would take such a manifestly imperfect certificate without even glancing his eyes over its contents or that he would venture to start the train without his express permission. The driver has paid with his life the penalty of his neglect of rule. That he and the guard would act as they did could not have been reasonably anticipated by Bal Krishna, and certainly he had no reason to suppose that the guard would depart from the usual practice and would possess himself of a conditional line clear certificate which was not intended for him, and which as Mr. That he and the guard would act as they did could not have been reasonably anticipated by Bal Krishna, and certainly he had no reason to suppose that the guard would depart from the usual practice and would possess himself of a conditional line clear certificate which was not intended for him, and which as Mr. Eaglesane, the Acting District Traffic Superintendent, says:--"No guard who knew anything about his work would accept as an authority to order the driver to proceed." We think that the Act, of Bal Krishna did not in itself endanger the safety of others, and that the effect was too remote to be attributable to such a cause. The disobedience of rule by Bal Krishna merely facilitated, though in quite an unexpected way, a second disobedience by the guard which did endanger safety. If we are to hold that every act of contributory negligence, however remote was criminal, one would hardly know where to stop and even the carelessness of the person who appointed Palmer as a guard might bring him within the pale of the Penal Code. As was observed by the learned Judges of the Punjab Chief Court in the case of Sant Dass v. Empress Ind. Ry. Cas. 722 (1894). "It appears to us to have been, and to have properly been, the intention of the Legislature to make only those acts or omissions offences which themselves led to or might lead to certain serious results and to have all subsidiary acts or omissions to be dealt with departmentally." That case was an exact counterpart of the present one, and the learned Judges acquitted the Station Master. On like grounds we set aside the conviction of Shunker Bal Krishna and direct that his sureties be discharged.