Smt. Kaushalya Rani vs The State

Grover, J.—The Petitioner was convicted u/s 447 and 504 of the Indian Penal Code by the Additional District Magistrate. A fine of Rs. 200/-was imposed for the first offence; in default she was to undergo simple imprisonment for two weeks. A fine of Rs. 200/- was also imposed for the second offence and in default she was to undergo simple imprisonment for a month. On appeal, the learned Additional Sessions Judge upheld the convictions as well as the sentences.

The Petitioner was living in her own house No. 23/8, Shakti Nagar, at the material time on the first floor. The ground-floor was in occupation of Dr. K. C. Jain a medical practitioner and an Honrary Magistrate, who had taken it on rent, the agreed rate of rent being Rs. 315/- per month. The relations between the Petitioner and her tenant became strained, with the result that civil and criminal litigation followed. It is not disputed that at the time when the incident took place on 12th May 1959, the tenant owed a large amount as arrears of rent amounting to Rs. 3,150/-of which payment was not being made by him on one ground or the other. On 12th May 1959, Dr. Jain and Smt. Om Prabha Jain, his wife, who is an M. L. A. in the Punjab, had invited S. Partap Singh Kairon, Chief Minister of Punjab and certain other guests to lunch at their residence. The offences under the aforesaid sections are alleged to have been committed on that occasion. Smt. Om Prabha Jain gave a complaint in writing to Shri Nakul Sain, Assistant Sub-Inspector, who had reached the spot soon after the incident. He made a report in the daily diary of the Thana on 12th of May 1959. Exhibit DB/1 being the copy. No action was, however, taken by the police on this report. Dr. Jain made a complaint to the Deputy Inspector General of Police on 14th May, 1959 vide Exhibit DW 5/B The Deputy Inspector General of Police ordered Shri R. S. Dabari, Deputy Superintendent of Police, to investigate the complaint. He registered a first information report No. 224 dated 16th May 1959, Exhibit PA/1. The Deputy Superintendent of Police reported that the case deserved to be cancelled. That report was accepted by Shri R. N. Singh, Sub-Divisional Magistrate. On 16th May 1959. Dr. Jain filed a complaint in the Court of the (sic)aqa Magistrate. This was sent to Shri C. L. Anand, Additional District Magistrate, for disposal, who found the Petitioner guilty and sentenced her as stated above under the aforesaid sections

In his complaint made on 14th May 1959 to the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Dr. Jain said that about a year ago the Petitioner had expressed a desire that he should vacate the house as she wanted to sell the same but he refused to do so. Then she demanded a store room on the ground-floor from him for a fortnight for keeping her luggage. She was allowed to make use of the store room which she never vacated and started harassing the complainant and the members of his family. Dr. Jain further wrote as follows:

****; this lady is threatening and abasing and throwing dirty things on us from above. I have been reporting all this to P. S. Roshnara but she seems to be incorrigible.

Now on the 12th day of May, we had invited Shri Partap Singh Kairon, Chief Minister, Punjab, to lunch in that house and a few M. P.s. wire also invited. On my request, S. H. O. Roshnara P. S. deputed a few constables also to control the traffic. This lady forcibly entered my house aid abused me in the presence of all to belittle me in their eyes. The police constables tried to check her entry but to no purpose. This has caused great annoyance.

To sum up, she is proving a great nuisance and is trying to harass me and be(sic) me in the eves of my distinguished guests and friends. A written complaint was sent to Police Station Roshnara but no action has been taken as vet.

In the complaint filed before the Magistrate by Dr. Jain something similar was stated though in more details. In his statement in Court as P. W. 1, the allegation against the Petitioner was that when the guests started taking lunch on 12th May 1959 the Petitioner began to abuse the ladies in his premises, from the first floor of her house. She said "That we were Bad mashes and thieves and were not paying rent." In addition she abused the ladies by saying that they were "Randian" and other words of the same type. Thereafter she came down to the ground floor and took a position on the main gate across the compound wall. Alter finishing the lunch the guests came to the veranda to wash their hands. She entered the main gate of the house, even though the constables asked her not to do so and came right into the varandah and started abusing by repeating the same kind of language. She also threatened to get Dr. Jain removed from the office of Honorary Magistrate and his wife from that of M. L. A. The Petitioner admitted in her examination u/s 342 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that she entered the compound of the house through the main gate, although she was asked by 1 he constables on duty not to do so. She claimed, however, that she remained at a long distance from the verandah and did not use any abusive language nor threatened to get the complainant and his wife removed from the offices held by them. According to her, she went to the spot because Dr. Jain was not paying rent to her and S. Partap Singh Kairon had come to the house and she wanted to make a request to him in the matter. She denied the other part of the incident of hurling abuses from the first floor when the guests had reached the house. Both the Additional District Magistrate and the Additional Sessions Judge found that Dr. Jain was in actual possession of the verandah and the open compound on the front side on 12th May 1959 and that she had trespassed into the compound in spite of the police stopping her and against the express wishes of Dr. Jain. The Additional District Magistrate, however, came to the conclusion that the Petitioner lost all restraint and used abusive language towards Dr. Jain and his wife Smt Om Prabha Jain and her conduct was calculated to try the patience of any person to such an extreme as to cause a breach of the peace although Dr. Jain and his wife kept their temper under control. The learned Additional Sessions Judge did not believe the complainant''s version or that of his witnesses that the Petitioner uttered any abuses. According to the learned Judge, the question was "Whether without uttering these words the accused, who entered the house against the express wishes of the complainant and said something about the non-payment of rent due to her in the presence of the eminent guests which the complainant and his wife had with them, to is not guilty of the offences for which she has been convicted". After discussing a number of authorities, the learned Judge proceeded to say-

The principle deducible from the above cited authorities is that it is the intent to annoy that matters and not mere knowledge that the trespass may have that effect. Where there is some other dominant intent, then that would exclude the presumed intent namely that the accused intended the natural consequences of his act. Here it is said that the intention of the accused was to see S. Partap Singh Kairon, the Chief Minister. A letter had previously been written to seek an appointment for that purpose. But no witness has been examined nor any document produced to prove that assertion. Besides, this was not the only place where S. Partap Singh Kairon could be met in Delhi. The proper place for meeting him should be the one where he stays in Delhi-An attempt could be made to contact him whilst he was entering the house of the complainant or coming out of it. The so-called desire to see S. Partap Singh Karion is to be viewed in the context of the circumstances in which it was attemped to be translated into action.

The accused on entering the house did not seek an interview with Shri Kairon but forthwith proceeded to proclaim in the presence of the guests about the complainant not paying the rent due to her and said some other unpalatable things though she probably stopped short of using abusive language.

The learned Counsel for the Petitioner contends that according to the finding of the learned Additional Sessions Judge the Petitioner did not utter any abuses of the nature alleged by the complainant. Her conviction has been sustained on the conclusion that after entering the compound of the house she proceeded to proclaim in the presence of the guests about the complainant not paying the rent due to her. It is pointed out that there is no justification tor the learned Judge saying, that she said some other unpalatable things also because he had already found earlier that whatever she said was about non-payment of rent which was due to her; nor is there any credible evidence about her proclaiming about non-payment of rent. There is force in this submission. The only witness who could be called disinterested is P. W. 2 Maharaj. Hari Singh Nihal Singh, a member of Parliament. According to him, the Petitioner had abused the complainant and his wife and she was saying that she would have removed him from Doctorship and his wife from M. L, A, ship. It is significant that Dr. Jain in his complaint to. the Deputy Inspector General of Police had made no such allegation, nor was it stated by him that she had proclaimed to his guests about this default in payment of rent. No mention was made by this witness about that matter, e. g. statement regarding non-payment of rent. It is pointed out that the other P. W. s, namely P. W. 3 Mohan Singh Bajaj was an emoloyee of the complainant and could not be regarded as distinterested. P. W. 4 was Smt. Om Prabha Jain, the wife of the complainant. P. W. 5 Dr. Satish Parkash did not say anything about the matter. The testimony of P. W. 6 Kalyan Singh and P. W. 7 Sada Nand Head Constable had been discarded by the Additional Sessions Judge for the reasons stated in paragraph 9 of his judgment inasmuch as they had made an obvious attempt to improve upon their previous statements. The complainant and his wife were interested and there had been a good deal of bad blood between them and the Petitioner, Thus there was no evidence on which the learned Additional Sessions Judge could find that the Petitioner had proclaimed or stated in disparaging terms the fact of the Petitioner not having paid the rent due to her, and I find it difficult to uphold the conclusion of the learned Adlitional Sessions Judge and that the Petitioner made any such statements even if it be assumed that she trespassed into the compound up to the verandah when the guests of Dr. Jain were there.

The learned Counsel for the Petitioner contends that the whole object of the Petitioner was to seek an interview with the Chief Minister of Punjab so that she could place her grievances before him with regard to the non-payment of rent but it is unfortunate that she was not able to meet him. The proesecution evidence does not establish that she had hurled say abuses at the complainant or his wife when the guests had assembled nor it is established that she proclaimed to the persons pre-, sent that Dr. Jain was not paying up her dues. No question, therefore, arises of her committing an offence u/s 604 of I. P. C. (of the Indian Penal Code). There seems to be a good deal of force in the submissions made by the learned Counsel for the Petitioner. As observed before, in the letter which the complainant addressed to the Deputy Inspector General of Police on 14th May which contained the earliest version of the incident, all that was stated was that she had forcibly entered his house and had abused him in the presence of all the guests to belittle him in their eyes. There was no mention whatsoever in that complaint or in the complaint filed before the Magistrate about the alleged statement relating to non-payment of rent. The only possible, conclusion, therefore, is that the prosecution has failed to satisfactorily establish that the Petitioner had made any such statement. Indeed, it must be held that the prosecution has not given cogent and convincing proof of what was actually said by the Petitioner when she went inside the compound of the house at the time of the incident. Section 501 of the Indian Penal Code provides that whoever intentionally insults, and thereby gives provocation to any person, intending or knowing it to be likely that such provocation will cause him to break the public peace, or to commit any other offence, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both. It is not comprehensible how in these circumstances any provocation was given by the Petitioner intending or knowing it to be likely that it would cause the complainant to break the public peace or commit any other offence. An intentional insult must be proved for that purpose and not merely an illegal entry or trespass.

Section 441 of the Indian Penal Ode defines criminal trespass in the following terms:

Whoever enters into or upon property in the possession of another with intent to commit an offence or to intimidate, insult or annoy any person in possession of such property.

or having lawfully entered into or upon such property unlawfully remains there with intent thereby to intimidate, insult or annoy any such person, or with intent to commit an offence, is said to commit Criminal trespass.

In The Punjab National Bank Ltd. Vs. Its Workmen, it has been laid down that where by reason of their participating in a pendown strike, the employees'' entry in the premises of the employer is unlawful or their continuance in the premises becomes unlawful, but the sole intention of the employees obviously is to put pressure on the employer to concede their demands, then, even if the strikers might know that the strike may annoy or insult the employers'' officers, it is difficult to hold that such knowledge would necessarily lead to the inference of intention requisite for constituting criminal trespass. The learned Counsel for the Petitioner says that her real intention while going inside the compound was to ventilate her grievance before the Chief Minister as she rightly or wrongly thought that the wife of the complainant being a M. L. A. in the Punjab, an exalted person of the position of the Chief Minister would be the proper quarters that should be approached in the matter of non-payment of rent for such a long period by the complainant. If that was her intention, even if she knew that her entry may annoy or insult the complainant it could not be held that criminal trespass had been committed. The learned Additional Sessions Judge has expressed the view that the intention of the Petitioner was to lower the complainant in the eyes of his guests by mentioning in their presence his default in the payment of the rent and thus to put pressure on him to pay up the same and it was a clear case of an entry with intent to annoy. Dr. Jain had admitted that he did not feel lowered by the mention of his default in the payment of the rent but, says the Judge, what constituted annoyance or insult was to-be determined not by the reactions of the particular individual but how an ordinary man would feel about it. Now if his conclusion could be upheld that the Petitioner had proclaimed in the presence of the guests about the complainant not paying the rent due to her and stated other unpalatable things, it would have followed that she had entered the compound with the intent to annoy and insult. As that conclusion cannot be accepted for the reasons given before, the Court is left with the alternative version of the Petitioner herslf that her primary object was to seek the good offices of the Chief Minister in the matter of realisation of the rent due to her. It may be that the Petitioner had chosen a wrong and wholly i(sic) advised course inasmuch as it was open to her to file an action in Courts of law but it is equally possible as has been suggested by her counsel that the Petitioner generally genuinely thought that this was the most effective way of realising her dues inasmuch as she had had a spate of criminal and civil litigation already with the complainant who holds the office of an Honorary Magistrate and is otherwise influential and from whom she apprehended all kinds of obstacles in the matter of realisation of her dues It is suggested that she may have been prompted by a genuine desire to make a request to the Chief Minister of the Punjab in this matter who could persuade the complainant or Smt. Om Prabha Jain to settle her legitimate dues. All this seems to be quite plausible. Consequently the conviction of the Petitioner cannot be upheld u/s 447 of the Indian Penal Code in the light of the pronouncement of their Lordships, her real object possibly being to seek the intervention of the Chief Minister in her troubles with. Dr. Jain which per se was quite legitimate and not unlawful.

It has not been contended on behalf of the State that there would be no justification for interference in revision on the above view of the matter, with the result that the petition is allowed and the Petitioner is acquitted of both the offences. The fine, if paid, shall be refunded.