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1914 DIGILAW 135 (ALL)

Ahsanullah Khan v. Mansukh Ram

1914-04-15

PIGGOTT

body1914
JUDGMENT Piggott, J. - I have before me a series of connected applications by one Ahsan-ullah Khan arising out of the following' circumstances. Mansukh Ram brought a criminal charge against Ahsanullah Khan and others, alleging commission by them of offences punishable under Sections 427 and 147 of the Indian Penal Code. After a very careful trial the accused persons were acquitted. Some two months after the order of acquittal Ahsanullah Khan presented to the Court of the trying Magistrate a Series of applications asking for sanction to prosecute Mansukh Ram and his principal witnesses for the offence of giving false evidence punishable u/s 193 of the Indian Penal Code. In connection with the said prosecution the Magistrate found that one of Mansukh Ram's witnesses had made a statement in support of which he produced, a certain document, and that an examination of that document affords strong reasons for supposing that the statement made by him was false. He sanctioned the prosecution of that witness. He rejected the remaining applications in an order the substance of which I understand to be that there was no reason to believe that the offence alleged by Mansukh Ram had in fact been committed; that his judgment of acquittal could not be considered as amounting to more than this, that Mansukh Ram had failed to prove by convincing evidence that these offences had been committed by Ahsanullah Khan and others; that in his opinion a conviction upon the materials available, when once Mansukh Ram and his fellow witnesses were placed in the dock instead of the witness-box, was decidedly improbable and that finally the case as a whole seemed to him to be one in which a Court should either have taken action of its own motion u/s 476 of the Code of Criminal Procedure or should decline to take any action at all. Ahsanullah took this order, as he was perfectly entitled to do, before the Sessions Judge under Clause 6 of Section 195 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The Sessions Judge in a brief order has expressed a general concurrence with the view of the Magistrate. 2. I take it to be settled law that nothing in Section 195 of the Code of Criminal Procedure itself justifies this Court in reconsidering the order of the Sessions Judge. The Sessions Judge in a brief order has expressed a general concurrence with the view of the Magistrate. 2. I take it to be settled law that nothing in Section 195 of the Code of Criminal Procedure itself justifies this Court in reconsidering the order of the Sessions Judge. The question is, whether the case is one in which this Court, after examining all the records in question, should in its discretion exercise powers conferred on it by Section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The revisional jurisdiction of this Court can always be exercised in order to prevent a gross and palpable failure of justice. At the same time it, should not be so exercised as to make one portion of the Code of Criminal Procedure conflict with another, as would be the case were this Court to permit the practice to grow up of invoking its interference in revision so as to give a right of appeal where such right is definitely excluded by other provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure. I called for the record of this case and issued notice to Mansukh Ram and the other accused persons in order to satisfy myself whether the case was one in which it could be said that the orders of Courts below had proceeded upon clearly erroneous principles of law or were likely to result in obvious failure of justice. I have now fully considered the whole question, in the light more particularly of the elaborate judgment written by the trying Magistrate when be acquitted Ahsanullah Khan and the persons accused along with him. I think it sufficient to say that, having clone this, 1 do not regard the present case as a suitable one for the exercise of the revisional jurisdiction of this Court. The applications will stand dismissed and the records will be returned.