Anant Singh vs Hari Charan Chaukidar

Bucknill, J.—This was an application in Criminal Revisional Jurisdiction made by a person called Anant Singh. The circumstances under which this application comes before this Court are very simple. A certain Hari Charan Chaukidar was charged by the complainant with assault and he was tried by a Magistrate of the Second Class of Chapra on the 12th April 1924 for an offence said to have been committed against the provisions of Section 325, Indian Penal Code. For certain reasons which the Magistrate expresses at considerable length the accused man was acquitted. It is important I think to observe that there is certainly in the Magistrate''s decision one sentence which appears to indicate that he was satisfied that the accused person had in fact assaulted the complainant. This passage which occurs at the end of his judgment reads There cannot be any manner of doubt that the complainant had been very badly assaulted by the accused. One may be sorry for him." I pause here to mention that from this order of acquittal the applicant here appealed to the District Magistrate of Chapra who however refused to interfere by a short decision dated the 29th of May last and it is really in connection with this order of that date that the applicant is now applying to this Court.

The reasons which are given by the trying Magistrate for giving as he calls it, the benefit of the doubt to the accused in this case may very shortly be stated to be that although it would seem that the Magistrate thought that the accused man had assaulted the complainant, he was quite satisfied that the circumstances under which the assault had taken place had not been truly laid before the Court. In fact he definitely stilted that he was unable to hold in any way that the occurrence took place in the manner as related by the complainant. This, of course, at once raises a very large question as to what might have been the circumstances under which the alleged assault took place. It indeed may have been that there was a fight in which the complainant had in fact been the aggressor, at any rate these circumstances according to the trying Magistrate and according to the view of the District Magistrate were not disclosed and in view of that fact it certainly would seem that it would not have been safe to have convicted the accused of any offence. I mention the circumstances in some detail because I think it is perhaps convenient that I should deal specifically with the facts in this case. But apart from these particular facts, there is, as has been many times pointed out in this Court, the greatest difficulty in the way of a private person coming to this Court in revision and asking successfully for the setting aside of a decision of acquittal. The practice in this Court is not to grant applications made by private persons for setting aside orders of acquittal. The reason for this practice is not far to seek, and indeed this Court has gone so far in at least one decision, as to state that a private person has no legal locus standi to make any application. I have not considered that point carefully and only draw attention to it as showing that it may be possible to justify the practice of this Court by a conclusion that there may be no locus standi on the part of a private person to make applications of this character. I should, however, like to say that, for reasons which I have already given, I do not think that in any case this would have been a matter in which we should have thought it fit or desirable to interfere. I am satisfied however that there is always a remedy in the hands of person who feels himself really aggrieved by an order of acquittal; he can always go to the Government legal advisers and I am confident that if he could show them that he had good grounds for being aggrieved by an order of acquittal they would on his behalf take it up: and in such circumstances, of course, the position of the Crown which, as has been said, alone has the conduct of prosecutions is entirely different when applying to this Court against an order of acquittal from the position that a private person has. However, as I have said, in this case there is no reason for interference and the application must be rejected.

Adami, J.

I agree.