Hanumant v. State of Madhya Pradesh

Supreme Court of India · 23 September 1952

The Court acquitted an Excise Commissioner and a contractor of forging a tender and an antedated letter, holding that circumstantial evidence must exclude every hypothesis but guilt and that an admission must be used as a whole.

Facts

H.G. Nargundkar, Excise Commissioner of Madhya Pradesh, invited tenders for working the Seoni distillery. The prosecution alleged that he took the sealed tenders home, showed a rival's tender to R.S. Patel, and let Patel substitute a lower tender (Exhibit P-3A), and that the two later forged a letter (Exhibit P-24) antedated to November 1946 to create a defence. The Special Magistrate, Nagpur convicted both of conspiracy and forgery. The Sessions Judge set aside the conspiracy conviction but upheld the forgery convictions under Section 465 IPC, and the High Court dismissed their revisions. The only direct evidence of the handing over of the tenders came from the office superintendent, who was himself a suspect and admitted being party to another forged note-sheet. The rest of the case rested on circumstances and on features of the documents. The appellants came by special leave.

Questions before the Court

Did the circumstantial evidence prove that the tender Exhibit P-3A was substituted after the rival tender was seen?
Could the courts below rely on the uncorroborated evidence of a witness who was a suspect and an admitted party to a forged document?
Was the letter Exhibit P-24 proved to be antedated, and could part of the accused's statement be used against him for that purpose?

What the Court held

Where evidence is circumstantial, the circumstances must be fully established, consistent only with the hypothesis of guilt, conclusive in nature and such as to exclude every other hypothesis. The chain must leave no reasonable ground for a conclusion consistent with innocence and show that in all human probability the act was done by the accused.
The courts below erred in accepting the uncorroborated testimony of a witness who was a suspect, was kept under police surveillance and admitted joining in a forgery. Concurrent findings resting on such testimony may be reviewed on special leave where grave injustice has resulted.
The so-called peculiar features of the tender were neutral circumstances that only fitted the prosecution theory if guilt was first presumed. The courts below departed from the rule that the accused is presumed innocent and the prosecution must prove guilt conclusively.
An admission, whether or not it amounts to a confession, cannot be split up and part of it used against the maker; it must be used as a whole or not at all. Expert evidence on the typewriter was inadmissible under Section 45 of the Evidence Act, and without it nothing showed Exhibit P-24 was antedated.
The convictions on both forgery charges were set aside and both appellants were acquitted.

Why it matters

The judgment sets out the rule for convicting on circumstantial evidence: the circumstances must be fully established, consistent only with guilt, conclusive, and must exclude every other hypothesis, forming a chain that leaves no reasonable ground for a conclusion of innocence. It also states that an admission must be used as a whole and warns that suspicion and conjecture cannot take the place of legal proof.

In the Court's words

Copied from the official judgment; each passage links to its page.

“It is well to remember that in cases where the evidence is of a circumstantial nature,the circumstances from which the conclusion of guilt is to be drawn should in the first instance be fully established, and all the facts so established should be consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused. Again, the circumstances should be of a conclusive nature and tendency and they should be such as to exclude every hypothesis but the one proposed to be proved.”

Mahajan, J.Page 5 of the judgment

“there must be a chain of evidence so far complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for a conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and it must be such as to show that within all human probability the act must have been done by the accused.”

Mahajan, J.Page 5 of the judgment

“It is settled law that an admission made by a person whether amounting to a confession or not cannot be split up and part of it used against him. An admission must be used either as a whole or not at all. If the statement of the accused is used as a whole, it completely demolishes the prosecution case”

Mahajan, J.Page 13 of the judgment

“Once it is assumed that the tender of Doongaji was shown to Patel, all these circumstances might to some extent fit in with the view that in certain respects it may have been copied from Exhibit P-6. The courts below fell into this error and departed from the rule that in a criminal case an accused person is to be presumed to be innocent and that it is for the prosecution to establish his guilt conclusively.”

Mahajan, J.Page 9 of the judgment

Provisions interpreted

Section 465, Indian Penal Code
Section 45, Indian Evidence Act, 1872Now: BSA 39(1) (NCRB correspondence table)
Article 136, Constitution

Related judgments

Followed in Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra (1984)

Case and bench

Parties: Hanumant v. The State of Madhya Pradesh
Case: Criminal Appeal No. 56 of 1951 (with Criminal Appeal No. 57 of 1951)
Decided: 23 September 1952
Bench: Mahajan, J.
Opinions: The Judgment of the Court was delivered by Mahajan, J. No separate opinion is printed.