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5. While Anwar Ahmed was recording the complaint of Raja Ram, a telephone message was received at 20.35 hours i. e. 8.35 P.M from Sub-Inspector Jagdish Dutt, P.W. 8 who was in-charge of the Control Room. The message was that a man was lying injured at the crossing of Lathi Mohal. Anwar Ahmed informed the Control Room that a report in respect of the occurrence had been already lodged and necessary action was being taken. The necessary entries were made with regard to the progress of the investigation in the General Diary of the Police Station and Anwar Ahmed went on duty at 9.00 P.M-his place being taken by Head Constable Sheo Prasad. P.W. 13.

6. The source of P.S.I Jagdish Dutt's information in the Control Room that a man was lying near the gate of Lathi Mohal was Shri Onkar Nath Seth. P.W. 12. Shri Onkar Nath Seth is a local Advocate and has his house only 40 or 50 paces from the shop of Chhunno the milk vendor. On being informed by somebody that a man was lying injured, he went to the place and saw the injured person. Nobody gave him any in formation as to who he was and what had happened and so he went back to his house and at 8.34 P.M telephoned to the Control Room informing it that a man was lying injured near the gate of Lathi Mohal and a patrol car should be sent. It was this message from Shri Onkar Nath which was picked by P.S.I. Jagdish Dutt in the Control Room. On receiving that message, he sent a wireless message to patrol car No. 2 in-charge of Nazrey Hasan, P.W. 9 and at the same time also sent the message to the Collectorganj Police Station within whose jurisdiction the man was lying. That is how at 8.35 P.M. Anwar Ahmed, P.W, 10 received the message from the Control Room which was duly recorded by him in the General Diary of the Station.

20. The. defence suggestion before the learned Sessions Judge was that till the inquest papers were prepared between 2.30.& 3.30 A.M., on the same night, the Police Station had no idea of this offence at all and that the wheels of investigation started moving only thereafter. The allegation is that after the Investigating Officer found that an offence had been committed in a particular locality, he decided to falsely im plicate the accused because of some grudge against Sidhauli. It is not the case that Raja Ram. P.W. 1 or the other two eye witnesses, who were perfect strangers, had any interest in implicating falsely any of the accused in this case. But the suggestion is that the Investigating Officer had a grudge against Sidhauli and he, therefore, pressurised Raja Ram. and the other two witnesses to give false evidence and it was only after he was successful in doing so that he obtained the F.I.R. from P.W. 1 Raja Ram on the morning of 24-4-1964. This suggestion on behalf of the defence seems to have very much impressed the learned Sessions Judge. There were serious difficulties, however, in accepting such a defence. The First Information Report was stated to have been recorded at 8.25 P.M. The seizure memo of the knife and the shirt had been made soon after and regular entries had been posted with regard to the same in the General Diary maintained at the Police Station in accordance with the regulations. Apart from entries with regard to the investigation of the offence that same night there are also other entries made in the General Diary in serial order which had nothing to do with this offence. These entries in the General Diary were fatal to the defence suggestion. The learned Sessions Judge however, brushed aside the difficulty with the facile observation that all those entries which are shown to have been made in the night in the General Diary must not have been made at all at the time and , that; after keeping some space blank in the General Diary, those entries must have, been made on the next day. after the investigating Officer had fixed up . everything. In our opinion the learned Sessions Judge was not justified in making this criticism. He has practically charged the Police Station with fabricating an official Register. The General Diary at the Police Station is maintained under U.P. Police Regulations. Regulation No. 294 prescribes that the General Diary . shall be written in duplicate under the superintendence of the officer-in-charge of the Station who is responsible for the entries made in it. The regulation further says that the original is to be sent to the Superintendent or Assistant or Deputy Superintendent-in-charge of the sub-division. The diary should be a complete but brief record of the proceedings of the police and of occurrences reported to them or of which they have obtained information.1 In other words, the General Diary, is to be kept from minute to minute and from hour to hour and a charge of this nature that the Officer-in-charge of the Station had not written up the General Diary in accordance with the regulation would be indeed a very serious charge which may not be countenanced unless established by strong evidence. As a matter of fact though the Officer-in-charge of the Police Station Basdeo Sahai. P.W. 17 and the two Head Moharrirs who were incharge of the General Diary on that night namely Anwar Ahmed and Shedeo Prasad had been examined in the case, there is no cross-examination of these witnesses on the charge now made. The entries till 9.00 P.M. relative to the present offence had been made by Head Constable Anwar Ahmed, P.W. 10. He was off duty at 9.00 P.M. and his place was taken by Head Constable Sheodeo Prasad P.W. 13. It will be wrong to assume that these two Head Constables who were in-charge of the General Diary would keep for no known reason blank spaces in the Diary for being filled up at some future time. It was not also explained why at all these Officers would decide to leave blank spaces in the General Diary at 8.25 P.M. The defence that the Police Station did not know about this offence till 3.30 A.M. would postulate that no body interested in filing a complaint with regard to this offence had approached the Police Station during the night. The only intimation which the Police Station had received in connection with this offence was-one received from the Control Room at 8.35 P.M. That intimation conveyed the Police Station nothing more than that, a per son was injured and lying at a certain place. No names or particulars had been mentioned. It would be recalled that this intimation had been given from the Control Room by Sub Inspector Jagdish Dutt, P.W. 8 as soon as he received the telephone message from Mr. Onkar Nath Seth. the Advocate. In the ordinary course this would be the first entry in the General Diary in connection with this offence. But what we find is that even before this intimation was received, several entries have been made in connection with this offence-the first of them being at 8.25 P.M. relating to the First Information lodged by Raja Ram, P.W. 1. In fact Head Constable Anwar Ahmed, P.W. 10 says that when he was recording the statement of Rate Ram, P.W. 1 this particular message was received from the Control Room at 8.35 P.M. and at that very time he told the Control Room on the phone that a report in respect of that offence had already been lodged at the Police Station and necessary action was being taken. This is confirmed by Jagdish Dutt, P.W. 8 when he was specifically asked about it ,in his cross-examination. It is not suggested that Jagdish Dutt who was in-charge of the Control Room had anything to do with any mischief contemplated by the officers of this Police Station and it would only show that Anwar Ahmed, P.W. 10 was telling the truth when he said that when the message was received from the Control Room the investigation, of this offence was in progress. The General Diary shows that this particular message from the Control Room has been duly entered at 8.35 P.M. The suggestion is that even this message must not have been entered at the time but noted on a separate piece of paper to be posted in the General Diary sometimes afterwards. It is not easy to see why at this particular point of time Anwar Ahmed should not have made the record in the General Diary in due course of official business. The message itself was innocuous and did not suggest that an offence had been committed or who the offender was or who were the assailants. Therefore, there is no reason whatsoever why the entry should not have been made at the time when the message was received. And since this entry about the message follows the entry with regard to the first information report, the normal inference would be that the several entries had been made in due course of official business. If the defence suggestion were true, we must assume that something must have occurred at 8.25 P.M. which inspired the Police Station not to enter the entries in due course. If none of the persons interested in complaining about the offence had reached the Police Station at that time and there was no known source of information at the Police Station with regard to the offence, there could not have been any good reason at all why the entries should not be made in the usual course. The importance of this aspect of the question was not lost on the learned Sessions Judge. He got over, this difficulty also by saying that Kailash must have come at about 8.25 P.M. and must have given some information. According to the learned Judge Kailash must have given information about his companions Onkar and Sidhauli and that was the reason why the officers attached to the Police Station stayed their hands and refrained from making any entry about the information given by Kailash. Now the case of Kailash, as disclosed in his statement under Section 342, Criminal Procedure Code, is that he had merely seen two or three persons assaulting Manohar Lal the deceased with knives and since he knew Manohar Lal he went to his rescue. The assailants of Manohar Lal, however, turned on him and he got injuries on both his hands. He, therefore, left the place and went to the Police Station to make a report. He does not say that he implicated Onkar and Sidhauli as being the assailants. Therefore, there is no basis for the conjecture of the learned Sessions Judge that the names of Onkar and Sidhauli might have been' mentioned by Kailash as the assailants. Secondly if what Kailash actually says is true there could be no possible reason for the Station Officer not to record his statement in the usual course because he was reporting the commission of a cognizable offence without naming the assailants and was wanting the officers to take immediate action to save Manohar Lal. It is impossible to believe that if such a statement of a cognizable offence being committed was reported to the Police Station, the Officers would have remained absolutely indifferent and inactive. As already stated no other influence was working at the Police Station at that time and, therefore, there could have been no reason at all why the information given by Kailash should not have been recorded. To suggest that the Officer delayed recording of Kailash's statement in order to implicate Onkar and Sidhauli would be absurd because Kailash had not mentioned the names of Onkar and Sidhauli. It would be extravagant to suggest that on hearing of a stabbing case within his area, the Officer would at once think of Onkar and Sidhauli with a view to implicate them falsely, without ascertaining, in the first place, the circumstances of the stabbing, the availability of Onkar and Sidhauli on that day at the particular place and time, the probability of eye witnesses mentioning the names of other assailants and the inclination of the relations of Manohar Lal to help the officer in his mischievous plans. It was not even considered by the learned Sessions Judge whether Kailash, in the circumstances, would have voluntarily gone to the Police Station to give information. It was possible for him to phone the Police Station to get immediate help to rescue Manohar Lal. Instead of that it is supposed that he went to the Police Station which was about three to four furlongs away. Secondly Kailash would be the last person to go to the Police Station by himself when there were circumstances which would impel him to keep himself as far away from the Police Station as possible. He could not have forgotten that only four or five days previously, he and Sidhauli had given a threat to Manohar Lal - a fact of which due notice has been taken by the learned Sessions Judge. He had. blood on his shirt and injuries on the right little finger which would draw the suspicion of any experienced Police Officer at the Police Station. It is, therefore, impossible to believe the story of Kailash that he had gone to the Police Station by himself to report about the assault on Manohar Lal and that though he made his report the Officer decided not to record it.

21. It necessarily follows from the above discussion that Kailash must have been brought to the Police Station with the blood stained knife by somebody at 8.25 P.M. and in that behalf we have a large body of evidence both of the eye witnesses Raja Ram, P.W. 1 etc. and the Police Officers who were in-charge of the Police Station. Immediately after the arrival of Raja Ram with Kailash, the investigation proceeded in the usual manner. Raja Ram's F.I.R. was recorded, the necessary seizure memos were prepared, the General Diary entries were posted and thereafter we know from Anwar Ahmed's evidence that he went off duty at 9.00 P.M. The Investigating Officer Basdeo Sahai, P.W. 17, however, took some more time at the Police Station to complete the proceedings before he went to the scene of offence. There was no particular hurry because he had already come to know that the Control Room had been contacted and there were people attending to Manohar Lal at the scene of offence. The offence which had been recorded at the time was only under Section 307, I.P.C. and not under Section 302, I.P.C. It was only much later when the Investigating Officer was at the scene of offence and recording the statements of the eye witnesses that the report about the death of Manohar Lal was received by him. In our opinion, there was no sufficient basis for the learned Sessions Judge to think, that the information about this offence had not been received till early next morning and that the General Diary had not been posted with the entries in due course of official business.