Judgment Intelligence
Conviction Set AsideRadhakishan v. State of U.P.
Criminal Appeals Nos. 160 to 162 of 1960; reported as AIR 1963 SC 822 and 1963 SCR Supl. (1) 408
- Court
- Supreme Court of India
- Date of Decision
- 27 September 1962
- Bench
- Justices Syed Jaffer Imam, N. Rajagopala Ayyangar and J.R. Mudholkar
- Relevant Acts & Sections
- Indian Post Office Act, 1898 — Sections 3(a), 52, 55; Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 — Sections 103, 165, 342; Indian Penal Code, 1860 — Sections 467, 471; Constitution of India — Article 136
Final Outcome
The three appeals were allowed and the convictions and sentences passed against the appellant were set aside (para 14).
Key holdings
- Even assuming a search contravened Sections 103 and 165 CrPC, the seizure is not vitiated; the court may only examine the evidence of seizure carefully (para 5).
- Entrustment is not an ingredient of secreting, destroying or throwing away a postal article under Section 52; retaining it for an inordinately long period can amount to secreting (para 7).
- A postal article remains in course of transmission until it is delivered, however long the delay (para 8).
- Where the father who shared the house produced the almirah's key, the son could not be held to be in exclusive, or even joint, possession of its contents (paras 11, 13).
Brief Facts
A postman at Bulandshahr was tried in three cases for stealing or secreting five registered letters under Section 52 of the Indian Post Office Act, 1898, and in two of them also for forgery offences; the Additional Sessions Judge acquitted him (para 1). On the State's appeals, limited to Section 52, the Allahabad High Court convicted him and imposed one year's rigorous imprisonment in each case (para 1). The letters were found during a police search, made in connection with another case, in an almirah in the two-room house he shared with his father, who produced its key; the appellant was away on leave (paras 2-3). He said the articles had been planted (para 3).
Court's Findings
Even assuming the search breached Sections 103 and 165 CrPC, the seizure was not vitiated: the search could be resisted and the court may examine the seizure evidence carefully, but "beyond these two consequences no further consequence ensues" (para 5). The Section 342 objection could not be raised for the first time under Article 136, a High Court may reverse an acquittal without finding compelling reasons, and consecutive sentences were not excessive (para 5). Section 52 does not require entrustment: to secrete means to hide, retaining a postal article in an almirah for an inordinately long period would be tantamount to hiding it, and Section 55 shows the legislature uses express words when entrustment is an ingredient (para 7). A delayed article remains in course of transmission until delivered (para 8), and acknowledgments raise only a presumption of delivery, displaced here by the addressees' evidence (para 9). But the High Court never found the almirah in the appellant's exclusive possession: the father produced the key and the almirah held many of the father's articles (para 11). Inferring exclusive possession from opportunity "would be arguing in a circle" (para 12).
Legal Principle
An illegal search does not vitiate the seizure of articles; it only allows the search to be resisted and calls for careful scrutiny of the seizure evidence. A presumption that an accused secreted articles found in a place arises only if that place, and so the articles, are proved to be in his exclusive possession (paras 5, 11, 13).
