STATE OF RAJASTHAN versus SUKHPAL SINGH & OTHERS

Citation: [1983] 2 S.C.R. 53 · Decided: 16-12-1982 · Supreme Court of India · Bench: Y.V. CHANDRACHUD · Disposal: Appeal(s) allowed

Cited by 2 judgment(s) · see the full citation network in Lexace

Judgment (excerpt)

" 
STAtE OF RAJASTHAN 
v. 
SUKHPAL SINGH & OTHERS 
• 
December 16, 1982 
[ Y. V. CHANDRACHUD, C.J. AND V. D. TULZAPURKAR, J. ] 
Evidence-Appreciation of-In an appeal a.gainst order of acquiltal by 
H.igh Court. 
Seven or eight armetl dacoits entered a bank at Bayana, terrorised and 
beat up its employees, looted currency notes worth Rs. 15, 253/·, put the same 
in a black box and drove away with the booty in an Ambassador car. The 
F.I.R. was lodged within half an hour of the dacoity and wireless messages 
were sent out for interception of the car. Soon thereafter. an Ambassador car 
having seven persons seated in it and being driven in panic arrived near Weir 
from the direction of Bayana' and met with an accident. The police and the 
public surrounded the occupants of the ca'r when they came out but they tried 
to escape by firing from their pistols. They were chased and arrested but not 
before some members of the public received injuries on acco.unt of the firing. The 
prosecution case was that it was the respondents who looted the bank, escar:ed 
in the car and were chased and arrested; that each of them was carrying a 
bundle of hundred currency notes of Rs. IO/~ each; that the black box found 
in the car contained currency notes of the va1ue of Rs. 6,800 belonging to the 
looted_ bank; and that live cartridges and knives had been recovered from the 
possession of some of the respondents. At the trial, the respondents admitted 
that they had been arrested near Weir but denied any hand in the dacoity. 
The-Sessions Judge rejected their plea and convicted ~hem under s. 395, l.P.C. 
The High Court acquitted the respondents on three grounds: (i) that 
the evidence regarding identification of tJle respondents was not convincing as 
some of the witnesses who had identified the dacoits in jail had failed to identify 
them before the trial court; (ii) that the evidence regardiag recovery of stolen 
property was not acceptable as the recovery memos were not genuine, the 
knives and cartridges had not been produced before the court, and the story 
that each of the respondents was carrying currency notes worth Rs. 1000 while 
running away after leaving a sum of Rs. 6,800 in the black box was unnatural; 
and (iii) that the allegation that lhe respondents had escaped in the Ambassador 
car and bad come out of that car after it met with an accident was not acceptable 
in the absence of an entry relating to the number of the car in the General 
Diary of the Police. 
Allowing the appeal, 
HELD : If two views of the evidence were reasonably possible in this 
appeal by speciaJ leave aS;ainst acquittal, the court would not have substituted 
A 
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S4 
SUPIUIMll COUl\t RllPORTS 
(1983] ~ s.C.ll. 
its own assessment of the evidence for that of the High Court. But it is 
impossible on any hypothesis to accept the conclusion of the High Court. It 
is difficult in an incident of this kind to. have evidence as strong and clinching 
as it is before the Court. 
The only conclusion- which one can come to upon 
that evidence is that the charge has been brought home to the accused. 
[57 E-F; 60 BJ 
(b) The judgment of the High Court is severely laboured and 
unrealistic. Evidence which is incontrovertible has been rejected on stftpicion 
and surmises. · Witnesses who bad no axe to grind and had no personal motive 
to implicate the accused on 3 false charge have been disbelieved on feeble 
considerations. And the recovery of incriminating articles bas been by~passed 
and disbelieved by characterising it as unnatural and incredible. 
Different 
crimes· have different pattcn;is and the offenders improvise their strategy accord-
ing to the exigencies of the occasion. The prosecution story· has ~n rejected 
as not :Hitting in with the common course of events on the. supposition and 
insistence that a crime of the present nature had to conform to a pattern of the 
kind which the High Court harboured in its mind. (57 F-H] 
(i) The High Court gave, exaggerated importance to the infirmities 
attaching to the ability of the witnesses to identify the respondents and over-
looked the fact that they bad been arrested red-banded and on the spot. The 
incident which took place in the bank, the attempt made by the offenders to 
escape and their pursuit by the police and the public, which had all been proved 
by the most clear and cogent evidence, ·were but lip.ks in the same chain of 
~ausation and were parts of 

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