Madhya Pradesh High Court
Manish Tiwari vs State Of M.P. on 15 November, 2000
Equivalent citations: 2001(5)MPHT561
ORDER S.C. Pandey, J.
1. This revision is directed against the order dated 21-7-2000 passed by the Additional Sessions Judge as well as Special Judge (NDPS) Jabalpur in Sessions Trial No. 179/2000.
2. The prosecution case against the applicant is that by his action he instigated Ku. Pooja Jain to commit suicide and thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 306 of Indian Penal Code. It is alleged in the F.I.R. that the applicant was on visiting terms with the family of the deceased who resided at Bargi Hills, Jabalpur. At the time of incident, the deceased Pooja was living with her mother Smt. Indira Jain and brother Sanjay Jain. The applicant took advantage of his familiarity with the members of the family of the deceased and began to harass Ku. Pooja Jain with an intention of having illicit relations with her. It is further alleged, that just prior to the date of incident, finding Pooja alone in her house at Bargi Hills, the applicant threatened her to sign an affidavit and also caught hold of her throat exhibiting violence. It is alleged that the previous conduct as well as the last conduct which has been stated above had made Ku. Pooja Jain depressed consequently she committed suicide on 174-2000 by throwing herself into the Narmada river over newly constructed Tilwaraghat Bridge. The statements of Smt. Indira Jain, mother of the deceased and that of her brother Sanjay Jain who were at Jabalpur are more important than that of her brother-in-law who was not at the spot at the time of incident and came from Nagpur subsequently.
3. It is alleged by Sanjay Jain that Manish Tiwari, who used to come to their house, was in the habit of misbehaving and harassing his sister Pooja. He used to threaten her for having illicit relations with his sister. His sister had told him about this action on the part of applicant prior to 4-5 days before her death. It is further alleged by this witness that Marriage of Manish Tiwari was settled elsewhere but somebody had written confidential letter to the party of the girl with whom his marriage was settled, regarding the fact that Manish Tiwari was a Gunda. On receiving that letter, his marriage was cancelled. It was further stated by him that on 10-1-2000 Manish Tiwari, finding Pooja Jain alone, wanted her to sign an affidavit but the girl refused to sign the said affidavit because she did not know the contents thereof. Thereafter, Manish Tiwari became violent and had caused physical injury on the throat of Pooja Jain. Consequently, on 17-1-2000 she committed suicide. No body knows the nature of the affidavit as it was never seized from the applicant nor does any witness state that Pooja spoke about the contents of applicant to anyone.
4. The statement of Smt. Indira Jain, the mother of the deceased is similar to that of Sanjay Jain and it is not necessary to repeat it. She has also alleged that the applicant was familiar in her house and used to take advantage of his position in order to entice her daughter for the purpose of having illicit relations with her. He has repeated the incident on 10-1-2000 as stated by Sanjay but she has further stated that similar incident was repeated on 12-1-2000. It is alleged by Indira Jain that on 12-1-2000 she had witnessed the incident herself and she tried to lodge a report on 14-1-2000 in the office of C.S.P. who was not available on that date. It is stated by her that she had given a report in writing and also made an oral statement in the office of C.S.P. before some of the officials. Thereafter, it is alleged by her that on 14-1-2000 Manish Tiwari threatened her son Sanjay and said that whatever you are doing, is not good. Similarly, on 15-1-2000 it is alleged by Indira that she was threatened by the applicant that she should restrain her son. For all these reasons, her daughter has committed suicide. Nidhi Jain, the sister of the deceased who was living at Nagpur and Dharmendra Jain, brother-in-law of the deceased have stated in their statements that Pooja had telephoned to them on 16-1-2000 that she was being harassed by the applicant who was demanding that she should sign a document and thereafter the girl committed suicide on 17-1-2000.
5. Anita Bai in her statement has stated that she was a domestic servant in the house of Indira Jain and she had found on 10-1-2000 at about 3.00 p.m. that Manish Tiwari and Pooja Jain were quarelling among them and therefore she called Indira Jain from her office.
6. The contention of the counsel for the applicant is that the real facts are to the contrary. In fact Ku. Pooja Jain had fallen in love with the applicant and had written him some love letters. It was the members of the family of deceased Pooja who wanted that their affair should not result in a marriage. Therefore they were creating obstruction in the way of applicant and Pooja. It was for this reason that Pooja Jain, out of disgust, committed suicide. It is argued that the tenor of the suicide note, which form part of the police case diary, reveals the state of mind of Pooja Jain at the time when she was going to commit suicide. The following statement is being reproduced.
^^ge vkSj thuk ugha pkgrs vc u gh gesa fdlh ls dksbZ f'kdk;r gSA lHkh [kq'k jguk ek¡ viuk [;ky j[kukA**
7. It is further argued that if Pooja Jain had committed suicide on account of any harassment then she would not have written a suicide note as has been reproduced above. By way of proof of the bona-fides of the applicant, photo copy of certain letters which were alleged to have been written by the deceased, are placed on record and the originals thereof were produced before the Court for its perusal. It is also alleged that these letters were primafacie written by Ku. Pooja Jain, as hand writing expert has compared her signatures with the standard writing of Pooja Jain and found it to be that of her. It is further contended that these letters were produced at the time of grant of bail to the applicant and this Court had given time to the prosecution to verify if these letters and the signatures thereupon are the same as that of Pooja, by comparing them with her standard hand-writing. The prosecution did not take any step and therefore in M.Cr.C. No. 840/2000 order dated 16-3-2000, this Court had made an observation to the following effect:--
'Similarly about the letters the accused had filed a copy of the report of the handwriting expert. Time was again granted to the Government Advocate for seeking verification report but till date the State counsel has not obtained any report'.
8. It is argued that even at this stage, the prosecution did not try to find out if the letters were written by Pooja Jain after seizing them from the possession of the applicant.
9. The learned counsel for the respondent, on the other hand, argued that charge-sheet does not include the letters and therefore at this stage framing of the charge, the Court should rely upon the material placed by the prosecution in the charge- sheet and should not consider the letters. The letters, at best, may be useful for the defence of the applicant and they may be dealt with at the time of the trial. The learned Trial Judge was prima facie satisfied with the allegation made as per the charge-sheet that an offence punishable under Section 306 of the I.P.C. has been made out and therefore, the charge was framed. This Court should not interfere with the impugned order at this stage.
10. The first and foremost important question is whether the applicant should suffer trial because the prosecution did not want to find out the truth of the matter and took partisan and stand by dropping those matters, that need to be verified during investigation? The Court is not convinced that it is the duty of the prosecution to suppress the truth. The duty of the prosecution is to help and assist the Court and state the truth after full investigation. It cannot take a partisan attitude like that of an ordinary litigant. The State has greater responsibility in the matters relating to the liberty of the citizens and the State cannot whittle down the liberty of persons by taking an attitude which is not conducive truth.
11. The contention of the learned counsel for the respondent that this Court should not reappreciate the evidence at this stage, has also been borne in mind before deciding this case. It is true that the Court is not required to appreciate evidence at this stage of framing charge. However, it is equally true that at the stage of finding out if charges are to be framed against the applicant, the Court is required to broadly consider the possibility of conviction of the accused in the matter placed before it. The contention of the learned counsel for the applicant is not correct when he argued that Court is powerless to consider any material other than the documents filed alongwith chargesheet. The contention could be accepted when the Court is convinced that the prosecution had made full and complete investigation and did not try supress any material from the eyes of the Court. However, the Court is not powerless in exceptional cases to consider the material placed by the accused on record to show his bonafides. The Supreme Court in the case of (Shri Satish Mehra v. Delhi Administration and Anr.) J.T. 1996(7) S.C. 6 was required to consider the scope of Section 226 and 227 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. After analysing Section 226 and 227 together with Section 239 of Code of Criminal Procedure, the Supreme Court ruled in that case :
"What is the scope of hearing should it be confined to oral arguments alone?"
'At these two stages the code enjoins on the Court to give audience to the accused for deciding whether it is necessary to proceed to the next stage. It is a matter of exercise of judicial mind. There is nothing in the code which shrinks the scope of such audience to oral arguments. If the accused succeeds in producing any reliable material at that stage which might fatally affect even the very sustainability of the case, it is unjust to suggest that no such material shall be looked into by the Court at that stage. Here the "ground" may be any valid ground including insufficiency of evidence to prove charge.' 'The object of providing such an opportunity as is envisaged in Section 227 of the code is to enable the Court to decide whether it is necessary to proceed to conduct the trial. If the case ends there it gains a lot of time of the Court and saves much human efforts and cost. If the materials produced by the accused even at that early stage would clinch the issue, why should the Court shut it out saying that such documents need be produced only after wasting a lot more time in the name of trial proceedings. Hence, we are of the view that Sessions Judge would be within his powers to consider even materials which the accused may produce at the stage contemplated in Section 227 of the Code.' 'But when the Judge is fairly certain that there is no prospect of the case ending in conviction the valuable time of the Court should not be wasted for holding a trial only for the purpose of formally completing the procedure to pronounce the conclusion on a future date. We are mindful that most of the Sessions Courts in India are under heavy pressure of workload. If the Sessions Judge is almost certain that the trial would only be an exercise in futility or a sheer waste of time it is advisable to truncate or nip the proceedings at the stage of Section 227 of the Code itself.' Consequently this Court while exercising the powers under revision can consider the impact of letters annexed to the revision application which were ignored by the Trial Court.
12. The totality of the circumstances of the case are that the applicant Manish Tiwari @ Chintu was familiar with the family of the deceased. He used to visit the family of the deceased. On this point, there is no dispute between the applicant as well as the complainant. However, the case of the applicant is that he had fallen in love with the girl. For this purpose he produced original love letters which were read by this Court. The photo copies of those letters form part of record of this revision. The case of the prosecution is that the intention of the applicant was to cause harassment to the girl to the extent that it resulted in commission of suicide by her. In broadly assessing the effect of the total material placed on record, specially, when the girl did not any accusation against the accused in the suicide note, this Court is of the view that the preponderance of probability is in favour of the case of the applicant and opposite to the case of prosecution. There is nothing on record to suggest that any written report was made by either mother or the brother of the deceased regarding the harassment caused by the applicant to the deceased Pooja. There are photo copies of letters placed on record totally pointing out in the contrary direction.
13. Further this Court is of the view that even assuming that the applicant was trying to harass the deceased and even was trying to threaten her to have illicit relations with her, he may be guilty of any other offence caused by the penal code depending on the nature of the threat. It would not be proper to draw an inference that an offence under Section 306 of I.P.C. is made out. Assuming for a moment, that the applicant was totally an evil person, and he wanted to have illicit relations with the deceased Pooja, the question for consideration is whether it could be said that he had abetted the commission of suicide on the part of the deceased. For this purpose, Section 107 IPC has to be looked into. It is clear that by trying to harass the deceased with a sexual object in mind, the applicant did not directly instigate her to commit suicide. Nor could it he said was engaged in any conspiracy as described in second part of the above section. He did not intentionally aid by any act or was guilty of an illegal omission for which Pooja would commit suicide. The explanation number 2 also does not come into play because he did not facilitate the commission of suicide. So far as the explanation number 1 of Section 107 of the IPC is concerned, the alleged act of the accused can be said to be causing harassment to the deceased, if any. It cannot be inferred from his alleged actions "dial he wanted Pooja to commit suicide. His actions may be a remote cause for commission of suicide on the part of Pooja Jain but that could never be an immediate cause which would be a culpable in the eyes of law. The cause should be within the reasonable contemplation of a man committing an act. He cannot be supposed to have the fore sight of a clairvoant. In view of this matter, the charge cannot be framed against the applicant under Section 306 IPC.
14. The result is that the impugned order dated 21-7-2000 in Sessions Case No. 179/2000 is hereby set aside. The applicant is discharged of charge framed against him under Section 306 I.P.C. Accordingly, this revision is allowed.
15. Consequently, M.Cr.P. No. 1629/2000 is dismissed as infructuous.