Holding

The High Court’s acquittal was erroneous; the evidence was sufficient to sustain conviction under Section 395 IPC.

Summary

In March 1971, a group of armed dacoits looted the State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur branch at Bayana, escaped in a stolen Ambassador car, and were later intercepted after the car crashed. The police recovered a black box containing Rs. 6,800 of the stolen cash, along with other incriminating items, and arrested the seven occupants. The Sessions Judge convicted the accused under Section 395 IPC, but the Rajasthan High Court acquitted them, holding that identification evidence was weak, the recovery memos were unreliable, and the police diary omitted the car number. On appeal, the Supreme Court examined whether the High Court could substitute its own assessment of the evidence and found that the totality of the evidence—identification, recovery of the black box, and the car description—was strong and credible. The Court held that the High Court’s rejection of key evidence was unreasonable and restored the conviction, imposing the original sentence with a fine.

Issues considered

Whether the identification evidence presented was sufficient to link the accused to the bank robbery.
Whether the recovery of the black box and other stolen property was admissible and reliable despite alleged irregularities in the seizure memos.
Whether the omission of the car number in the police General Diary undermines the prosecution’s case that the accused escaped in that specific vehicle.

Legislation cited

Indian Penal Code, 1860s. 395

Subjects

bank robberydacoityidentification evidencerecovery of stolen propertycriminal appealSection 395 IPCacquittal reversalevidentiary assessment

Judgment

A
STAtE OF RAJASTHAN
v.
SUKHPAL SINGH & OTHERS
• B
December 16, 1982

[ Y. V. CHANDRACHUD, C.J. AND V. D. TULZAPURKAR, J. ]
Evidence-Appreciation of-In an appeal a.gainst order of acquiltal by
H.igh Court.

Seven or eight armetl dacoits entered a bank at Bayana, terrorised and
c
beat up its employees, looted currency notes worth Rs. 15, 253/·, put the same
in a black box and drove away with the booty in an Ambassador car. The
F.I.R. was lodged within half an hour of the dacoity and wireless messages
were sent out for interception of the car. Soon thereafter. an Ambassador car
having seven persons seated in it and being driven in panic arrived near Weir
from the direction of Bayana' and met with an accident. The police and the D
public surrounded the occupants of the ca'r when they came out but they tried
to escape by firing from their pistols. They were chased and arrested but not
before some members of the public received injuries on acco.unt of the firing. The
prosecution case was that it was the respondents who looted the bank, escar:ed
in the car and were chased and arrested; that each of them was carrying a
bundle of hundred currency notes of Rs. IO/~ each; that the black box found
in the car contained currency notes of the va1ue of Rs. 6,800 belonging to the E
looted_ bank; and that live cartridges and knives had been recovered from the
possession of some of the respondents. At the trial, the respondents admitted
that they had been arrested near Weir but denied any hand in the dacoity.
The-Sessions Judge rejected their plea and convicted ~hem under s. 395, l.P.C.

The High Court acquitted the respondents on three grounds: (i) that
the evidence regarding identification of tJle respondents was not convincing as F
some of the witnesses who had identified the dacoits in jail had failed to identify
them before the trial court; (ii) that the evidence regardiag recovery of stolen
property was not acceptable as the recovery memos were not genuine, the
knives and cartridges had not been produced before the court, and the story
that each of the respondents was carrying currency notes worth Rs. 1000 while
running away after leaving a sum of Rs. 6,800 in the black box was unnatural;
and (iii) that the allegation that lhe respondents had escaped in the Ambassador G
car and bad come out of that car after it met with an accident was not acceptable
in the absence of an entry relating to the number of the car in the General
" Diary of the Police.

Allowing the appeal,
H
HELD : If two views of the evidence were reasonably possible in this
appeal by speciaJ leave aS;ainst acquittal, the court would not have substituted
S4 SUPIUIMll COUl\t RllPORTS (1983] ~ s.C.ll.

its own assessment of the evidence for that of the High Court. But it is
impossible on any hypothesis to accept the conclusion of the High Court. It
is difficult in an incident of this kind to. have evidence as strong and clinching
as it is before the Court. The only conclusion- which one can come to upon
that evidence is that the charge has been brought home to the accused.
[57 E-F; 60 BJ

(b) The judgment of the High Court is severely laboured and
B unrealistic. Evidence which is incontrovertible has been rejected on stftpicion
and surmises. · Witnesses who bad no axe to grind and had no personal motive
to implicate the accused on 3 false charge have been disbelieved on feeble
considerations. And the recovery of incriminating articles bas been by~passed
and disbelieved by characterising it as unnatural and incredible. Different
crimes· have different pattcn;is and the offenders improvise their strategy accord-

c ing to the exigencies of the occasion. The prosecution story· has ~n rejected
as not :Hitting in with the common course of events on the. supposition and
insistence that a crime of the present nature had to conform to a pattern of the
kind which the High Court harboured in its mind. (57 F-H]

(i) The High Court gave, exaggerated importance to the infirmities
attaching to the ability of the witnesses to identify the respondents and over-
• looked the fact that they bad been arrested red-banded and on the spot. The
D incident which took place in the bank, the attempt made by the offenders to
escape and their pursuit by the police and the public, which had all been proved
by the most clear and cogent evidence, ·were but lip.ks in the same chain of
~ausation and were parts of one and the same transaction. [58 A-B & F]

(ii) There was no infirmity attaching to the evidence of the Station
House Officer, Bayana who was examined as a court witness by the High Court
E itself, regarding the recovery of the black box from the car and the High Court
. was not justified in rejecting his evidence. The submission that the box could
have been easily planted by the police after the respondents were arrested is
wholly unjustified. The box was not left in the car as a matter of sweet volition.
The respondents had no option save to abandon it in the car when they were
sufrouoded by the police and the public. What is natural by the test of
common experience is that thieves, while ruoniqg away in order to escape from
F those who are chasing them, would leave a biggish article containing the loot
where it lies. [59 D·E]

(iii) The circumstance that the number of the car was not mentioned

.. in the police diary was a petty matter in the midst of a large mass of good
evidence connecting the respondents with tho crime. [59 G]

G CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION ; Criminal Appeal No. 134
of 1973.
Appeal by special leave from the Judgment and Order dated
the 13th November, 1972 of the Rajasthan High Court in S.P. Crimi·
H nal Appeal Nos. 580 and 581 of 1972.

B.D. Sharma for the Appellant.
R.AlASTHAN v. SUKHPAL (Chandrachud, C.J.) SS

D. Mookerjee and Dr. B.S. Chauhan for Respondents I to 4. A
-1 R.K. Garg, A.K. Panda and Sunil Kumar Jain for Respondents
2 and 3.

The Jqdgment of the Court was delivered by
8
CHANDR.ACHUD, C.J. The respondents were convicted by the
learned Sessions Judge, Bharatpur, under section 395 of the Penal
Code and. were senrt:nced to· rigorous imprisonment for three years.
By its judgement dated November 1,3, 1972, the High Court of
Rajastban bas set aside that judgment and has acquitted the
respondents. The State of Rajasthan has filed this appeal by special
leave against the judgment of the High Court.
c
The State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur bad a branch at Bayana
in the district of Bharatpur. At about 1.30 p.m., on March 17, 1971,
seven or eight persons looted the Bank. Jugal Kishore Paliwal, the
Agent {)f the Bank, was working in his chamber, while Bbagwan
D
-
Dass Goyal, Head Cashier, and Sutesh Chand Goyal, Assistant
Cashier, were in the cash cabin at that time. Tbe decoits, who were
armed with country-made pistols, knives and a hand-grenade,
ordered these Bank employees to stand up and raise their bands.
Three dacoits entered the Agent's room, beat him up and opened
the safe and the almirahs. They could not find any money therein.
They then took the agent to the cash cabin, where they tore open
the lid of an iron cash box and took away currency notes of
Rs. 15,253 from it. They snatched a black-coloured confidential
box lying on a nearby table, threw away the papers which were in
that box and put the money in it. They carried away the black box,
, got into a blue Ambassador car and drove away.
F
The first Information Report of the occurrence was lodged by
the Head Cashier, Bhagwan Dass Goyal, within about ha ff an hour
i.e. at 2.00 p.m., at Police Station Bayana. The Police Officer there
sent wireless messages to the surrounding police stations as also to
police outpo.sts .. On receipt of the message, the Head Constable in G
charge of the police station at Weir, posted police personnel to block
the car on the road. Soon thereafter, an Ambassador car bearing

-. No. DLJ 7458, in which seven persons were seated, arrived from the
direction of Bayana. Driven in panic, the car dashed against an oil
barrel in front of a shop and was damaged. The occupants of the e
car were forced by that circumstance to come out of the car, where-
upon the~ were surrounded by. the police and the.members of th~
56 SUPREME COURT REPORTS (1983] 2 S.C.R.

A public. The occupants fired from their pistols and tried to escape
under cover of fire but the police and the public gave them a hot
chase for over a mile and succeeded in surrounding them once again.
The occupants of the car opened fire causing injuries to some
members of the public. Ultimately, they were over-powered aud
caught. Babu Lal, Station House Officer of the Bayana Police
B Station, arrived on the scene and arrested the respondents. It trans-
pired during the investigation that the Ambassador car which the
respondents bad used was stolen from New Del.hi a day before the
occurrence. The case of the prosecution is that the respondents
before us were the very persons who looted the Bank, escaped in the
· car and were chased and arrested.
c
The respondents admitted that they were arrested near Weir
but they denied that they bad any hand in the loot of the Bani.:.
Each of them furnished a different explanation as regards his pre-
sence at Weir at the time of their arrest. They also examined four
witnesses to show, principally, the reason of their presence at the
D place of arrest.

It would appear from the judgment of the learned Single
Judge of the High Court of Rajasthan that three points were argued
on behalf of the respondents : (I) There is no evidence regarding
the identification of the respondents; (2) There is no trustworthy
E
evidence regarding the recovery of the stokn property from their
possession; and (3) There is no evidence to show that they had
escaped in the particular Ambassador car and had come out of the
car after it met with an accident.

On the question of identification of the respondents, the High
Court has rejected the evidence of the Agent of the Bank Jugal '
Kishore Paliwal (PW 4), Head Clerk Radbey Charan Bbargava (PW
5), Head Cashier Bhagwan Dass Goyal (PW 6), Aricultural Asstt.
Murari Lal (PW 7), Daftaries Radhey Shyam Sharma (PW 8) and
Amba Prasad (PW 9), and Asst. Ca•hier Suresh Goyal (PW 10),
G on the ground that th0ugh some of these witnesses had identified the
dacoits in the jail, they bad failed to identify them before the trial
court. It appears that these witnesses had wrongly identified some of
the accused in the committing court as also before the trial Court.
According to the High Court "The only irresistible conclusion
H which can be drawn from their statements is that the;r evidence
regarding identification is not convincing."
RAJASl'HAN v. SUKHPAL (Chandrachud, C.J.) 57

On the question of recovery of the stolen property from the A
possession of the respondents the case of the prosecution is that each
of the respondents was carrying a bundle of hundred currency notes
of Rs. 10 each. It is further alleged that the black box lying in the
Ambassador car was found to contain currency notes of the value
of Rs. 6,1l00 belonging to the Bank. lo addition, live cartridges and
knives are also alleged to have been recovered from the possession B
of some of the respondents. The High Court has rejected the whole
of this evidence on the ground that the recovery memos "cannot be
said to be genuine" and were prepared subsequently, that the knives
and live cartridges were not produced before the Court, that the
story that each of the respondents was carrying currency notes worth
Rs. 1000, while running away is .unnatural and that, it is not likely c
... that the respondents would leave the sum of Rs. 6,800 in the black
box in the car and would 'each carry a sum of Rs. 1,000, as if to
create evidence against themselves.

On the third question regarding the allegation that the respon- D
dents bas escaped in the Ambassador car and bad come out of that
car after it met with an accident, the High Court has rejected the
evidence that the respondents bad fled away in the pirticular car on
the ground that in the entry Exhibit D·40, in the General Diary of
the Police Station, relating to the First Information· Replrt the
number of the car was not mentioned. I

If two views of the evidence were reasonably possible, we
would not have substituted our own assessment of the evidence
for that of the High Court in this appeal against acquittal. But, we
are of the opinion that it is impossible on any laypothesis to accept
the conclusion of the High Court that the prosecution has failed to F
.· establish its case. With respect, we regard the judgment of the High
Court as severally laboured and unrealistic. Evidence which is in·
controvertible has been rejected by the High Court on suspicion and
surmises. Witnesses who had no axe to grilld and had no personal
motive to implicate the accused on a false charge, have been disbe-
lieved on feeble considerations. And the recovery of incriminating G
articles has been bypassed and disbelieved by charactc:rising it as un-
natural and incredible. Different crimes have different patterns and
the offenders improvise their strategy according to the exigencies of
the occasion. The High Court has rejected the prosecution story as
not fitting in with the common course of eve~ts on the ,suppositiom H
and insistence that a crime of the present nature bad to conform to
a pattern of the kind which the High Court harboured in its mind.
58 SUPREME COURT REPORTS (1983] 2 s.c.R.

A On the first question, that is to say the question of identifi-
cation, the High Court gave an exaggerated importance to the infir-
mities attaching to the ability of the witnesses to identify the
re>pondrnts. It was overlooked, and when an argument in that
behalf was made it was rejected, that the respondents were arrested
red-handed and, in a manner of •peaking, on the spot. There was no
B dispute that the incident of the kind alleged by the prosecution had
taken place in the premises of the Bank. And it requires no strong
persuasicn to hold that after the Bank was looted, the offenders,
whcsoever they may be, would try to escape. The lodging of the
First Information Report within half an hour of the incident, the
prompt flashing of the wireless message to the police stations and
c police outposts in the vicinity, the posting of police guards on the
road to stop the car bearing a particular description if it was
detected, the accident which the car met with, the emergence
from the car of six or seven persons, the pursuit which
the police and the public gave them, the shots fired by those persons,
the beating given by members of the public to them and the fact
D that they were ultimately over· powered, caught and arrested, are
all matters which are proved by the most clear and cogent evidence.
Respondents are the ·persons who got down from the car after it
met with an accident and they'" are the very persons who bear tell·
tale marks of the rather severe drubbing given by the public. We are
unatle to understand how, in these circumstances, the High Court
E could have held that since the accused were not arrested on the spot,
the evidence regarding their identity must assume importance. The
incident which took place in the Bank. the at(empt made by the
offenders to escape and their pursuit by the police and the public,
lire but links ii) the same chain of causation. They are parts of one
and the same transaction. This, therefore, is a case in which the
F offenders were caught red-handed near the place of offence while
they were trying to escape. They fired while fleeing and caused
injuries to those who were bravely trying to surround them but
eHntually, the police and the public got the better of them. No
further question survives but, since the High Court has given great
importance to some other aspects of the case, we must advert to
G
them.

Equally significant is the circumstance that an office box
(Article 3) containing Rs. 6,800 was seized from the Ambassador
H car from which the respondents came out after the accident. The
Memo of Seizure is at Exhibit P-22. The bundles of currency notes
found in the box bore chits in the name of the Bank of Bikaner and
RAJASlHAN ~. SUKHPAL (Chandrachud, C.J.) 59
Jaipur, Bayana Branch. The box also contained certain documents
belonging to the Bank, including a passbook of Head Clerk Radhe
Shyam Bhargava (PW 5). Some of the' witnes~es examined by the
prosecution turned hostile, which only shows what terror a lawless
group·of dacoits can strike in the minds of men. But the evidence
of Babu Lal, the Station House Officer, Bayana, who was examined
as a Court witness by the High Court itself, shows that the black box B
containing the money and the other articles was seized from the
Ambassador car. The High Court has rejected this evidence with a
,
~-
.,.
........
broad and unfounded observation that the recovery memo was pre-
pared subsequently. We are unable to share that view. The High
Court says that "It is not easily believable that the accused would
leave Rs. 6,800 in the box lying in the car and each would run away c
• with a thousand rupees". The story that a sum of Rs. 1,000 was
'
found on the person of each of the respondents may or may not be
accepted. But there is no infirmity attaching to the evidence of
Babu Lal regardin'g the recovery of the black ! box from the car.
Shri R.K. Garg, who appears on behalf of the respondents, urged
that the box could have been easily planted by the police after the D
respondents were arrested. This submission is wholly unjustified. The
box containing the currency notes, which were.a part of the loot,
· was not left in the car as a matter of sweet volition. The respondents
had no option save to abandon it in the car in which they were
travelling, when the car met with an accideit and they were surroun-
ded by the police and the public. What is natural by the test of E
common experience is that a biggish article containing the loot
would be left by the thieves where it lies. They would not take it
with them, while running away in order to escape from the clutches
of the people who were chasing them.

F
The High Court has dwelt copiously 011 the question as to
whether the number of the Ambassador car was disclosed in the first
Information Report. The number of the car may or may not have
been mentioned to the police by Goyal ·who gave the F.l.R. But we
consider that to be a petty matter in the midst of a large mass of G
good evidence connecting the respondents with the crime. The fact
that the respondents escaped in an Ambassador car is specifically
mentioned in the F.I.R., Exhibit P-1. In fact, the F.L R. mentions
that the Ambassador car bore the number DLJ 7458 b1t the High
Court considered it as an interpolatien since, the entry, Ex~ibit D-40
in the General Diary of the Police Station relating to the F.l.R., does H
not mention the number of the car. The inference drawn by the High
Court that the F.I.R. was prepared later is unsustainable. The entry
60 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1983) 2 S.C.R.

A D·40 is after all a summary and summaries are not intended to be
exhaustive. Then they would cease to be summaries.

It is difficult in an incident of this kind to ·have evidence as
strong and clinching as we have before us. The only conclusion
\\hich cne can come to upon that evidence is that the charge has
B been brought home to the accused. Accordingly,' we allow the appeal,
set aside the judgment of the High Court and restore the order
cf ccnvicticn recorded b} the learned Sessions Judge against the
mrcndents under S€Ction 395 of the Penal Code. The learned Judge
had sentenced each of the respondents to rigorous imprisonment
for three years. The judgment of the High Court is already a decade
c old. (We are beholden that we are not yet faced with cases in their
Silver jubilee year). Respondents have been on bail after undergoing
a substantial pa·rt of the imprisonment. We understand that some of
them are not working as Veterinary doctors.ior Assistants and have
settled down as married men with children. Taking these factors
into account, we sentence each of the respondents to rigorous impri-
D sonment for the period already undergone by them. We, however,
impose upon each one of them a fine of rupees three thousand,
. which they shall pay within three months from to-day. Failing such
payment, the respondents shail each undergo rigorous imprisonment
for a period of six months .
.E
H.L.C. Appeal allowed.