Judgment :- 1. This application by the petitioners (accused 4 and 9 to 11 in P. R.8 of 1964) is to quash the order of the Sub-Magistrate, Badagara committing the petitioners along with the other accused in the case for trial to the Sessions Court of Calicut. The State Prosecutor opposes the application. 2. There is no gainsaying that by comparison with S.209 and 210 Cr. P.C., the language, in sub-S. (7) of S.207A makes a deliberate change. While the language in sub-S. (6) has retained the material part of the language in S.209, Cr. P. C., requiring that the Magistrate shall, if he is of opinion that such evidence and documents disclose no grounds for committing the accused for trial, record his reasons and discharge him, sub-S. 7 says when such evidence being taken, such documents being considered, such examination, if any, being made and the prosecution and the accused being given an opportunity of being heard, the Magistrate is of opinion that the accused should be committed for trial, he shall frame a charge and commit the accused. It will, therefore, be seen that the language in S.210 which says that the Magistrate is satisfied that there are sufficient grounds for committing the accused for trial has not been adhered to in sub-S. (7) of S.207A Cr. P.C. Despite this difference in the language it is no more and no less than the converse of sub-S. (6), and when sub-S. 6 says of no grounds for committing, the opinion referred to in sub-S. (7) must be that the evidence and documents disclose grounds for committing the accused. So, there can be no doubt that to enable the Magistrate to frame a charge and make an order of commitment for trial he should be of opinion that the evidence and documents before him disclose grounds for committing the accused for trial. 3. Under S.207A Cr. P.C. in any proceeding instituted on a police report the Magistrate is bound to take evidence of only such eye witnesses as are actually produced by the prosecution in court, and if the Magistrate is of opinion that it is necessary in the interests of justice to take evidence of any one or more of the other witnesses produced by the prosecution or others, he may take such evidence also. But if the Magistrate is not of that opinion and if the prosecution has not examined any eye witnesses he has jurisdiction to discharge or commit the accused to the sessions merely on the basis of the documents referred to in S.173. 4. Here in this case no occurrence witnesses were produced by the prosecution for examination before the Magistrate. It is not known why they did so in spite of the observation of the Supreme Court in Shri Ram v. State of Maharashtra (AIR. 1961 SC. 674). Subba Rao, J., observed: "Rarely we come across cases where the prosecution does not examine important eye witnesses, for such a procedure would entail the danger of the said witnesses being tampered with by the accused, with the result that there will not be any evidence taken by the committing Magistrate which could be used as substantive evidence under S.288 of the Code. Even if the prosecution takes that risk, the Magistrate shall exercise a sound judicial discretion under the second part of sub-S. (4) of S.207A in forming the opinion whether witnesses should be examined or not, and any perverse exercise of that discretion can always be rectified by a superior court. But there may be a case where the Magistrate can make up his mind definitely on the documents referred to in S.173 without the aid of any oral evidence and in that event he would be within his rights to discharge or commit the accused, as the case may be." However, on the evidence furnished by the documents under S.173 learned Magistrate committed all the accused including the petitioners to stand their trial to the Sessions Court. The question for decision now is whether on the documents produced under S.173 committal of the petitioners can be justified. In Kushi Ram v. Hashim (AIR. 1959 SC. 542) the Supreme Court has referred to the distinction between absence of legal evidence and absence of reliable evidence and stated that if it could be said that there is no legal evidence at all in support of the prosecution case the commitment would be bad, but if on the other hand, there is legal evidence the question whether such legal evidence is also reliable evidence should be left to the Sessions Court. 5. 5. Having heard learned counsel for the petitioners and the State Prosecutor we feel that there is no legal evidence against accused 9 to 11, but that there is such evidence against the 4th accused. As far as the fourth accused is concerned his name is mentioned as one of the members of the unlawful assembly in the first information report. His presence at the scene is spoken to by at least one occurrence witness, witness No. 8 in the charge sheet. There is also evidence of motive for the fourth accused to have committed the offence and the records show that the fourth accused did sustain certain injuries. So on the records produced before the Magistrate he is justified in holding that there is legal evidence against the fourth accused and committing him to stand his trial before the Sessions Court. We would like to specially mention that we are not considering whether the evidence disclosed is reliable and sufficient to sustain a conviction which has to be decided by the trial Judge. All that we say is, that there is legal evidence on which the Magistrate could have committed the accused for trial. 6. Now with regard to accused 9 to 11 their names are not mentioned in the first information report. We have looked into the case diary statements of the witnesses and not one witness had deposed before the police that accused 9 to 11 were at least present at the scene, no matter whether they had participated in the rioting or not. Learned Magistrate has also not mentioned whether the records under S.173 disclose any legal evidence against them. That being so, we are of opinion that it would be a case of no evidence at all and in the interests of justice their commitment has to be quashed. In the result we hold that the commitment of accused Nos. 9 to 11 (petitioners 2 to 4) was not justified and setting aside the order of commitment, discharge them under Sub-S. 6 of S.207A. The commitment of the fourth accused (first petitioner) does not appear to be unjustified and the order as against him is confirmed. This would not affect the order of commitment made against the other accused including the fourth accused. The order will be communicated to the Sessions Court at once.