Raktu Singh vs Emperor

John Bucknill, J.—This is an application in Criminal Revisional Jurisdiction No. 550 of 1921 made by one Raktu Singh. The applicant asks that an order of the District Magistrate of Darbhanga, dated the 13th of September 1921, directing that a further enquiry into a criminal case brought against the petitioner, in which he was tried and discharged by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Darbhanga for various offences notably against the provisions of Sections 465, 468, 471 and 193 of the Indian Penal Code, be set aside.

There is a long history behind the case stretching back to the year 1918. I need not go into the details of the matter at great length but the story is that the petitioner purchased a share in certain villages from some persons one of whom is the person who brought the original complaint against the present applicant. This person says that the applicant committed these various offences relative to forgery. It is said that when the applicant made an application to have his name registered before the proper authority that authority in the first instance allowed the application; on an appeal a higher authority again took the same view, but subsequently, on still further appeal, the Commissioner of the Division appears to have taken the opposite view and to have sanctioned the prosecution of the applicant under the Sections of the Penal Code to which I have already referred. Then on this sanction which was apparently granted u/s 476 of the Code of Criminal Procedure the applicant was tried before Mr. Shamsul Zoha, the Magistrate of Darbhanga, and this Magistrate, after hearing the case, gave a judgment of considerable length in which he very Straightly states that the Crown had completely failed to make out the case for the prosecution. The applicant was, therefore, discharged. However, the person to whom I have referred as the complainant then went before the District Magistrate of Darbhanga and seems to have succeeded in pursuading him somehow that the trial before the District Magistrate of Darbhanga had not been properly carried out; and this District Magistrate, who seems to have taken it for granted that the applicant was guilty, ordered that the matter should be re-opened (and I presume) that the applicant should be re-tried.

I cannot find any reason to support this finding. Here this man has been prosecuted before a competent officer and has been, after a trial before that, officer, found not guilty and discharged. The Magistrate found definitely that the Crown had failed to make out a case against the accused. Under such circumstances, whatever may be the powers of the District Magistrate to order a re opening of the matter, under, there is some positive allegation of impropriety of conduct (which there is not here) against the Trying Officer, I think it very improper that an accused person who had been definitely acquitted should be placed on his trial a second time for the offence. To me such a proposition is quite unsatisfactory. I must, therefore, set aside the order.