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Judgment
Maclean, C.J.—I think this rule must be made absolute. The learned Sessions Judge, upon the question of evidence, has treated the evidence of the witnesses who said that they recognized the Petitioner by his voice, as absurd. He says : "The other witnesses could not have recognized the accused in the dark, for it is absurd that they could recognize his voice." If, then, that evidence be laid aside as valueless, what other evidence is there against the accused? The Sessions Judge has convicted him upon the uncorroborated confession of one of the co-accused Ram Jitu. When Ram Jitu was caught, he implicated the present Petitioner; he said he was one of the party. Ram Jitu was never in the witness-box as a witness against the present Petitioner.
It has been held by a Full Bench of this Court, Empress v. Ashootosh Chuckerbutty ILR 4 Cal. 483 that such a confession if proved -- as it was here--is evidence against the present Petitioner; but it is evidence of the very weakest kind and if uncorroborated, is not sufficient, in my opinion, to warrant a conviction. It is at best the evidence of an accomplice, and Illustration (b) to sec. 114 of the Evidence Act indicates at any rate what value ought to be placed on such evidence. Here the accomplice is uncorroborated, and I do not think that, upon the uncorroborated evidence of the accomplice, the accused should have been convicted. The rule must be made absolute.
Banerjee, J.
I concur.