Document Fragment View

Matching Fragments

14. Unless a judge trying a heinous offence does not administer a caution to himself, especially, when his moral sense of justice is seriously disturbed, he is likely to fall into an error inducing in him "an instinctive reaction against a dispassionate judicial scrutiny of the facts and law".

15. Baron Alderson in his address to the jury in Reg. vs. Hodge entered a warning as follows:

"10. The mind was apt to take a pleasure in adapting circumstances to one another, and even in straining them a little, if need be, to force them to form parts of one connected whole; and the more ingenious the mind of the individual, the more likely was it, considering such matters, to overreach and mislead itself, to supply some little link that is wanting, to take for granted some fact consistent with its previous theories and necessary to render them complete." (Vide Hanumant, Son of Govind Nargundkar vs. State of Madhya Pradesh (AIR 1952 SC 1952 - para 10)

(The Nature of the Judicial Process:

Benjamin N. Cardozo (Author): Ninth Indian Reprint 2011: Universal Law Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd.)

17. A judge has no 'will' of his own. In the calling of a judge his only 'will' is, only 'choice' he has is

- if that can be called one - to give force to the 'cumulative effect' of the evidence placed before him taking inspiration from the statutes applicable and settled precedents.

18. With due deference to the learned Sessions Judge, we feel it necessary to observe that he has precisely lapsed into the mental mould Baron Alderson so felicitously warned the learned brethren of the judiciary to guard against.

25. For one thing, there is absolutely no evidence to support the said conclusion that the cause of death of the deceased was within the knowledge of the appellants. For another, the prosecution has completely failed to prove that the appellants were absconding. The only material we find in the entire evidence of the prosecution is that deceased had died on 02.07.2013 and the appellants were arrested near Tikota cross on 10.07.2013. Neither PW.9 and nor PW.10 had said that the appellants were not available at their normal place of residence during the entire period or that in spite of making hectic efforts by the police they could not be traced till 10.07.2013, when they chose to arrest them. The material on record shows that it was entirely possible that since by 10.07.2013 the investigating officer had recorded the statements of all material witnesses, he decided to arrest the appellants only on that day and accordingly he took them into custody. This conclusion of the learned Sessions Judge is a classic instance of what Baron Alderson had observed: