LexSOHRAB S/O BELI NAYATA & ANR. versus THE STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH
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472 SOHRAB S/0 BELi NAYATA & ANR. V. THE STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH May 2, 1972 [P. JAGANMOHAN REDDY AND G. K. MITTER, JJ.] Practice and Procedure-Power of High Cour~ in appeal against .acauittal. In an app1~al against acquittal, the High Court, while maintaining the . acquittal of some of the accused, reversed it in respect of the appel- lants and comcicted them of offences under s. 302 read with s. 34, I. P. C. Dismissing the appeal to this Court, HELD: Under ss. 417, 418 and 423, Cr.P.C., the High Court has ·full power to review at large the evidence upon which an order of acquittal was .founded and to reach the conclusion that upon the evidence the order of acquittal should be t>oversed. But in exercising this power A B c the High Cou'rt should give proper weight and· consideration to such matters as, (a) The views of the trial judy,e as to too credibility of the D witnesses; (b) the presumption of innooonce. in favour of the accused, a presumption certainly not weakened by t~ fact that he has been ac- quitted at the trial; ( c) the right of the accused to the heir.fit of any .doubt, and (d) the slowness of the appellate court to disturb a finding of fact arrived at by a judge who had the advantag,e of seeing the Wit- nesses. It should not only consider every matter on record having a bearing on the questions of fact and the reasons given by the Court below in support of its order of acquittal, but should expPoSS its weasons in its judgment which led it to hold that the acquittal was not "justified. [478 E,--H; 479 A-CJ In the present case, the High Court did co~sider all the aspects consi- dered by the Se:sions Court, with most of which it has also concurred especially those aspects of the case in respect of which witnesses tried to embellish and o0xaggerate. Bu! that by it.self, does not assist the ac- cused nor can the broad features of-the evidence of the prosecution case be doubted in respect of its . version. Merely l>ocause there have been discrepancies and contradictions in the evidence of some or all of the witnesses it did not mean that the entire evidence of the prosecution had E F ·to be discarded., It was only after exercising caution and care and •ifting the evidence to separate the truth from untruth, exaggeration, embellishment and improvement, that the High Court had come to the conclusion that what could be accepted implicated the appellants and G convicted them. This Court has held that falsus in uno falsus in omnibus is not a sound rule for the reason that hardly any one comes acros.s. a witness whose evidence does not contain a grain of untruth or at anv rate iome exaggeration or embellishment. Where, however, the substratum of th.~ prosecution case, or a material part of the evidence, cou]d not be be- lieved. it 'would not be permissible for the Court to reconstruct a storv of its own out of the rest. [477 G-H; 478 A-Dl · H Sheo Swarup and 0'5. v. King Emveror. A.LR. 1934 P.C. 227; Sanwi;nt Singh v. State of Ra;a,than, [1961] 3 C.C.R. 120 and Agar- wal v. State of Maharashtra, [1963] 2 S.C.R. 405, referred to. 1·· le. .,,_,_," ·~ /, - .. -~-t.· l 'f A B c D F G H SOl!RAf v. STATE (Jagan.nahan Reddy, J.) 473 CRIMIN\,. '\PPFLLATE JURISDICTION: Criminal Appeal NJ. l·lO of J 9i,9. 1\;)peal by special leave from the judgment and ordc·r dated Augc:st 5, 1969 of the :ll'adhya Pradesh High Court, Indor Bench in Criminal Appeal No. 26 of 1967, Frank Anthony, F. C. Chandi, A. T. M. Sampat, E. C. Agar- wal a and K. C. _J1_garwala, for tlie appellants. I. N. Shroff, for the respondent. The Judgment of the Court was delivered by P. Jaganmohan Reddy, J. The Sessions Judge of Indore ac- quitted all the seven accused who were charged with the murder of one Sobal Singh. In an appeal by the State, the High Court while maintaining the acquittal of five of them viz. Jinnatbai, Gaburia, Ismail, Sardar and Bashir; reversed it in respect of Sohrab and Nadar, whom he convicted under Section 302/34 and sen- tenced each of them to life imprisonment. Thev were also con- victed under Section 25-A of the Arms Act and each of them was sentenced to one. _vear's rigorous imprisonment. The sentences were directed to run concurrently. This appeal is by certificate against the said convict_ions and sentences. The prosecution c.ase is that there was a strained relationship between the accused and the deceased inasmuch as in D
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