TMI Blog1959 (9) TMI 49X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... , but the sentence was maintained. The appellant applied for a certificate of fitness under Article 134(1)(c) of the Constitution, and the High Court having refused it, he was granted special leave by this Court. 2. The two charges on which he was tried, disclose the facts sufficiently for the purpose of this appeal, and may be quoted here : Firstly :--That you paid ₹ 300 on or about 4th December, 1948, to Roshan Lal Gupta, unit clerk in M. I.'s office Bulandshahar to issue to you fictitious permits for bricks and which were issued to you, to wit permits Nos. 19, 23, 24, 25 and 26 of Indent Book No. 59, which were later on detected and order was issued for not crediting them and they were cancelled and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 165A of the I. P. C., and within my cognizance as Special Judge. Secondly :--That you abetted the forging of permits Nos. 19, 23, 24, 25 and 26 of Indent Book No. 59 by Roshan Lal in fictitious names and you. took them from Roshan Lal intending that these permits shall be used for cheating the department and the cultivators in general and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 468/109 of the Indi ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ures or thumb-marks were not theirs. The prosecution case further shows that instructions were issued to the brick-makers not to honour these permits, and as a result, no bricks were delivered on the strength of these permits. 6. Enquiry into the matter appears to have been set on foot, as a result of a complaint made by the appellant to the Assistant Agricultural Engineer, Aligarh on January 17, 1949. That complaint is described as an application in the Paper Book, and is Ex. P-3. As a consequence of this complaint, the appellant was summoned before Sri Kant Sharma (P. W. 4), Assistant Agricultural Engineer, and there, the appellant gave a writing on May 7, 1949, amplifying his previous complaint and stating some further facts. That document is Ex. P-4. 7. The prosecution case is thus built up of the facts that certain indents were issued in the names of persons who had not applied for them and who did not need bricks, and further that the appellant made two statements in writing in Exs. P-3 and P-4, wherein he stated his own version of what had happened. According to the High Court, these two documents amounted to confessions and read with the other oral evidence, establish ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... oney as a bribe to Roshan Lal Gupta or whether his intention to do so can be gathered not as an inference but as a proved fact from these documents. Ex. P-3 is as follows : I beg to submit that I stood in need of some bricks for constructing a house. I came to know that bricks, cement etc., could be had from the office of the Mechanical Inspector of Bulandshahar. Babu Roshan Lal, Clerk had told me this thing. Thereupon I made a Request to him that, if possible, he should get the permit for bricks issued to me from his office. Thereafter Babu Roshan Lal came to my house on 4th December, 1948. He took ₹ 300 from me and gave me four permits and idents Nos. 23, 24, 25 and 26, Book No. 59, dated 11th November, 1948, and permits of D. Section 6, Bulandshahar, serial Nos. 31, 32, 33 and 34, Book No. 4 dated 23rd November, 1948. I could not get the bricks. I searched for Babu Roshan Lal. He met me on 30th December, 1948, and made pretensions. He assured me that those permits had been finished by his department, that he was on leave at that time, that his leave would come to an end on the 15th January, 1949, and that thereafter he would give me fresh permits. On 17th January, 1 ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... permit for 5000 bricks to Lala Munshi Lalji in connection with the construction of his well and had promised that he would get the cement, which had moistened due to heavy rains, exchanged from his office. For this ₹ 150 were received (by him) in this period. He also said that a report for exchange of the cement was to be made to the Inspector, Mr. Bhatnagar, who must, therefore, also get a share. He took a sum of ₹ 150 also for getting the subsidy for engine granted saying that his (Munshi Lal's) work could not be done without giving this money inasmuch as the matter related to the refund of a huge amount and Mr. Bhatnagar had also to get a share in it. After this Mr. Bhatnagar also came for verification of this amount. When I did not get the goods, I demanded the money back from Roshan Lal. He told me that he would give me the money when he would have got back the same from Mr. Bhatnagar. Thereafter Mr. Bhatnagar also came to me. I made a demand for refunding the money. Mr. Bhatnagar promised to refund the money after returning to Bareilly. I have not received that amount as yet. In this connection a talk had taken place between Mr. Bhatnagar and Roshan Lal that M ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... ave laid down as the test for basing the conviction of an accused on his own admission. On the facts, a suspicion may arise that money was paid as a bribe, but we cannot successfully repel the suggestion that the appellant might have been cheated and had no intention of paying a bribe. Their Lordships of the Privy Council have laid down that unless there be a plenary admission of guilt, the facts must be interpreted reasonably and an admission of all the facts which constitute the offence should be present. 13. The prosecution case also suffers from the defect that the original permits which were with the appellant were not seized by the police, and an argument was thus allowed to be raised that the originals, were in the name of the appellant, while the counterfoils were kept in the names of fictitious persons. We have no means of determining this issue, because the permits are not there. Considering the matter as a whole, we are of opinion that other evidence led in the case, apart from Exs. P-3 and P-4, merely established that in the record maintained some permits were shown to have been issued in the names of persons, who had not applied for them. The rest of the case has to ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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