# Ramgopal Ganpatraj Ruia & Another v. The State of Bombay

- **Citation:** [1958] 1 S.C.R. 640
- **Court:** Supreme Court of India
- **Decided:** 1958
- **Case number:** Criminal Appeal No. 82 .of 1957
- **Source:** https://unisonlegal.in/judgment/supreme-court-of-india/ramgopal-ganpatraj-ruia-another-v-the-state-of-bombay-1408
- **Pages:** 8

## Headnote

1957
Ramgopal
Ganpatraj
Ruia & Another
v.
The State of
Bombay
Sinha J.
1957
October 14.
640
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
[1958]
into matters which should have been left to be determined at the trial. Perhaps, they had to cover the
ground which had been so elaborately discussed in the
order of the learned Presidency Magistrate.
For the reasons given above, we have come to the
conclusion that there are no merits in this appeal. It
is accordingly dismissed. It is hoped that the Court
of Session, which will now be in seizin of the case, will
conduct the trial and conclude the proceedings with
all reasonable speed and without any avoidable delay.
We hope that the inordinate delay in bringing this
case to trial has not prejudicially affected the· case of
either party.
Appeal dismissed.
KAPIL DEO SHUKLA
v.
THE STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH
(B. P. SINHA, P. GoVINDA MENON and
J. L. KAPUR, JJ).
Jury trial-Evidence in English-Jurors not knowing English
we/I-Whether
trial void-Prejudice-Memorandum of appealPractice of not setting out specific grounds, if proper-Code of
Criminal Procedure (V of 1898), ss. 418 and 419.
The appellant was tried by a Sessions Judge and a jury for
offences under ss. 477-A and 408, Indian Penal Code. A large
volume of documentary evidence was in English and the statement of one of the principal witnesses was given in English. The
main question for decision was the authorship of the forged
documents. It was found that the jurors were not well versed in
English and were not in a position to decide the main question.
The jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty and accepting the verdict the Sessions Judge acquitted the appellant. The
State appealed to the High Court. In the memorandum of appeal
only one ground was taken, 'that the order of acquittal is against
the weight of evidence on the record and contrary to law" The
High Court accepted the appeal and convicted the appellant. The
appellant contended that the appeal before the High Court was
incompetent as no particular errors of law, upon which alone and
appeal lay under s. 418, Code of Criminal Proc~du~e, were set ~mt
in the memorandum of appeal and that the tnal m the Session
Court was no trial in the eye of Jaw.
S.C.R.
SUPREME. COURT REPORTS
641
Held, that a memorandum of appeal is meant to be a succinct
1957
statement of the grounds .upon which the appellant propose& to
. -
support the appeal. The practice prevailing in the Allahabad Kap1l Deo Shukto
High Court of not taking specific grounds either of law or fact is
v.
to be disapproved even assuming that s. 419 of the Code of
The State oJ
Criminal Procedure does not in terms require the setting out of Uttar Pradesh
such grounds.
Held further, that the trial before the Sessions, Judge was
coram non judi<;e on account of the incompetence of'the jury to
decide the question of the authorship of the forged c\ocuments.
In such a case the question of prejudice does not arise as it.is not
a mere irregularity, but a case of '•mis-trial".
Ras Behari Lal v. The King Emperor, (1933) L.R. 60 I.A. 354
followed.

## Text

1957
Ramgopal
Ganpatraj
Ruia & Another
v.
The State of
Bombay
Sinha J.
1957
October 14.
640
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
[1958]
into matters which should have been left to be determined at the trial. Perhaps, they had to cover the
ground which had been so elaborately discussed in the
order of the learned Presidency Magistrate.
For the reasons given above, we have come to the
conclusion that there are no merits in this appeal. It
is accordingly dismissed. It is hoped that the Court
of Session, which will now be in seizin of the case, will
conduct the trial and conclude the proceedings with
all reasonable speed and without any avoidable delay.
We hope that the inordinate delay in bringing this
case to trial has not prejudicially affected the· case of
either party.
Appeal dismissed.
KAPIL DEO SHUKLA
v.
THE STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH
(B. P. SINHA, P. GoVINDA MENON and
J. L. KAPUR, JJ).
Jury trial-Evidence in English-Jurors not knowing English
we/I-Whether
trial void-Prejudice-Memorandum of appealPractice of not setting out specific grounds, if proper-Code of
Criminal Procedure (V of 1898), ss. 418 and 419.
The appellant was tried by a Sessions Judge and a jury for
offences under ss. 477-A and 408, Indian Penal Code. A large
volume of documentary evidence was in English and the statement of one of the principal witnesses was given in English. The
main question for decision was the authorship of the forged
documents. It was found that the jurors were not well versed in
English and were not in a position to decide the main question.
The jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty and accepting the verdict the Sessions Judge acquitted the appellant. The
State appealed to the High Court. In the memorandum of appeal
only one ground was taken, 'that the order of acquittal is against
the weight of evidence on the record and contrary to law" The
High Court accepted the appeal and convicted the appellant. The
appellant contended that the appeal before the High Court was
incompetent as no particular errors of law, upon which alone and
appeal lay under s. 418, Code of Criminal Proc~du~e, were set ~mt
in the memorandum of appeal and that the tnal m the Session
Court was no trial in the eye of Jaw.
S.C.R.
SUPREME. COURT REPORTS
641
Held, that a memorandum of appeal is meant to be a succinct
1957
statement of the grounds .upon which the appellant propose& to
. -
support the appeal. The practice prevailing in the Allahabad Kap1l Deo Shukto
High Court of not taking specific grounds either of law or fact is
v.
to be disapproved even assuming that s. 419 of the Code of
The State oJ
Criminal Procedure does not in terms require the setting out of Uttar Pradesh
such grounds.
Held further, that the trial before the Sessions, Judge was
coram non judi<;e on account of the incompetence of'the jury to
decide the question of the authorship of the forged c\ocuments.
In such a case the question of prejudice does not arise as it.is not
a mere irregularity, but a case of '•mis-trial".
Ras Behari Lal v. The King Emperor, (1933) L.R. 60 I.A. 354
followed.
Criminal Appellate Jurisdiction : Criminal Appeal
No. 82 .of 1957.
·
Appeal by special leave from the judgment and
order dated the 12th August, 1953, of the Allahabad
High Court in Criminal Appeal No. 114 of 1951 arisi~g
out of the judgment and other dated the 31st July,
1950, of the Court of the Additional Sessions Judge
At Allahabad in Criminal Sessions Trial No. 22 of 1949.
S. P. ·Sinha and B. C. Misra, for the appellant.
G. C. Mathur and C. P. Lai, for the respondent.
1957. October 14. The following Judgment of the
Court was delivered by
SINHA J.-This appeal by speCial leave is directed
Sinha,J.
against the judgment and order dated August 12,
1953, of a Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court
(Desai and Beg JJ.), setting aside the order of acquittal passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge
at Allahabad, dated July 31, 1950, in Sessions. Trial
No. 22 of 1949. The appellant had been charged under
ss. 408 and 4 77 A of the Indian Penal Code, and tried
by jury of 5. The jury returned a unanimous verdict
of not guilty. The learned Additional Sessions Judge
accepted the verdict of the jury and acquitted the
accused. On appeal by the Govetnment of Uttar
Pradesh, the High Court in a judgment covering about
130 typed pages set aside the order of acquittal and
L2SC/61-4
642
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
[1958)
1957
convicted the appellant under . the sections aforesaid,
Kapil Deo slzukla and sentenced him to rigorous impriso~ent for four
v.
years and a fine of ten thousand rupees, m default of
Tlze Stare of payment, further rigorous imprisonment for one year,
U11ar Pradeslz under s. 408, Indian Penal Code, and to rigorous imprisonment for four years under s. 477A, Indian Penal
Sinha,J.
C d
h
f
d
h
o e, t e sentences o imprisonment un er t e two
sections to run consecutively. Out of the fine, if realized, seven thousand rupees was directed to be paid
to the Imperial Bank of India, Allahabad, as compensation. The prayer for a certificate of fitness for appeal
to this Court was refused. The appellant moved this
Court and obtained special leave to appeal by order
dated December 15, 1953.
In the view we take of the legality of the trial in
this case, it is not necessary to go into the details of
the prosecution case except to state that the appellant
was charged under the sections aforesaid, for having
committed criminal breach of trust in respect of valuable securities amounting to Rs. 7,410 odd of the Imperial Bank at Allahabad, while in the employment
of the Bank as a clerk, and had in that capacity, "with
intent to defraud, destroyed, altered, mutilated and
falsified accounts and other papers" during January
to July, 1946.
A number of contentions were raised before us by
the learned counsel for the appellants, but it is necessary to notice only two o"f. them, namely, (1) that the
appeal by the State of Uttar Pradesh, to the High
Court, should not have been entertained as the memorandum of appeal did not comply with the requirements of law as laid down in ss. 418 and 419 of the
Code of Criminal Procedure; and (2) that the trial in
the Sessions Court was no trial at all in the eye of law.
In respect of the first contention, it is enough to say
that though the memorandum of appeal filed in the
High Court was wholly inadequate, the defect was not
such as to render it null and void so as to entitle the
High Court to reject it in limine. The point arises in
this way: Apart from the prayer, the only ground
taken in the petition of appeal is "that the order of
acquittal is against the weight of evidence on the
S.C.R.
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
643
record and contrary to law." The argument is that
l9S7
under s. 418 of the Criminal Procedure Code, where Kapil ;;;;Shukla
a trial is by jury, "the appeal shall lie on a matter of
•·
law 0nly", and as no particular error of law is set out
The State of
in the memorandum of appeal, the consequence of this
Uttar Pradesh
serious omission, it is further contended, is that in the
eye of law; this was no petition of appeal at all, which
could have been entertained by the High Court. This
contention was raised before the High Court by way of
a preliminary objection to the maintainability of the
appeal. The High Court over-ruled that objection on
the ground that s. 419 which is the specific provision
of the Code of Criminal Procedure, relating to petition
of appeal, only requires that it shall be in writiri.g and
accompanied by a copy of the judgment or order appealed against, and in cases tried by jury, a copy of
the heads of the charge recorded under s. 367 of the
Code. The High Court observed that there is no provision in the Code which required that the petition
of· appeal should specify the matters of fact or of law,
on which the appeal is based. The Court also referred
to the prevailing practice in that Court according to
which no specific grounds ar~ taken either on fact or
on law. According to the High Court, there was no
difference between an appeal based on facts and an
appeal based only on questions of law, as in the case
of a jury trial. In view of these considerations, the
High Court held that the preliminary objection was
not well-founded in law.
Assuming that the High Court was correct in its
appreciation of the legal position, even so, we must
express our disapproval of any such practice as has
been referred to in the judgment below. A memorandum of appeal is meant to be a succinct statement
of the grounds upon which the appellant proposes to
support the appeal. It is a notice to the Court that
such and such specific grounds are proposed ·to be
urged on behalf of the appellant, as· also a notice to
the respondent that he should be ready to meet those
specific grounds. A memorandum of appeal with a
bald ground like the one quoted above is of no help to
any of the parties or to the Court It may have the
Sinha, I.
1957
Kapil Deo Shukla
v.
The Stateof
l.1/far Pradesh
Sin.Ira,/.
644
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
[1958J
merit of relieving the person responsible for drawing
up the ground of appeal, of applying his mind to the
judgment under appeal and its weak points, but this
slight advantage, if it is so, is very much out-weighed
by the serious disadvantage to the parties to the litigation and the Court which is to hear the appeal. Such
a bald statement of the grounds leaves the door wide
open for all kinds of submissions, thus, tending to
waste the time of the Court, and taking the respondents by surprise. It is a notorious fact that courts,
particularly in the part of the country from where this
appeal comes, are over-burdened with large accumulations of undisposed of cases. The parties concerned
and their legal advisers should concentrate and focus
their attention on the essential features of cases so as
to facilitate speedy, and consequently, cheap administration of justice. It may be that a bald ground like
the one noticed above, was responsible for the inordinately long judgment of the High Court. Such a practice, if any, deserves to be discontinued and a more
efficient way of drawing up grounds of appeal has to
be developed. If counsel for the parties to a litigation
concentrate on the essential features of a case, eliminating all redundancies,' the argument becomes more
intelligible and helpful to the Court in focussing its
<!-ttention on the impor_tant aspects of the case. As
the appeal succeeds on the second ground, as will presently appear, we need not say anything more on the
first ground.
The second ground on which, in our opinion, the
appeal must succeed, is based on the findings of the
High Court itself. This case involved a consideration
of a large volume of documentary evidence almost all
in English. The oral evidence was directed mainly to
conned those documents and to explain their bearing
on the charges framed against he accused, of criminal
breach of trust and falsification of relevant accounts
and entries in the registers maintained by the Bank
Mr. Ganguli, prosecution witness No. 26---Agent of the
Bank-was examined at great length, and he gave
his evidence on 12 days between October and December, 1949. It runs into about 45 typed pages. This
S.C.R.
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
645
evidence appears to have been given by him in English
1957
because he put in an application that he had given Kapil Deo Shukla
the evidence in English and that he was not in a
v.
position to say whether the Hindi version as recorded
The State of
· by the deposition~writer was the correct version, as Uttar Pradesh
he was not familiar with Hindi.
The High Court
LJ.
S/nnu1
-
had made the following observations as to the nat.ure
of the case and the requisite qualifications of the members of the jury necessary for a proper understanding
of the case :
·
"We consider that the instant case was not fit to
be tried by a jury at least by any ordinary jury. It
was a very complicated case in which a mass of documents was produced. The decision of the case rested
upon the question by whom the· various documents
were written or prepared. Those documents are all in
English and nobody could decide the case satisfactorily
unless he had a good knowledge of English and was in
a . position to judge the writing. The offences with
which the respondent was charged were under a Government order triable by a jury and the case had to
be tried by a jury unless the Government thought-fit
to revoke or alter the order. The Government did not
revoke or alter the order and did not even declare
that the case should be tried by a special jury under
s. 269(2), Criminal Procedure Code."
·
In our opinion, the remarks of the High Court quoted
above give a correct impre~sion of the proceedings in
the Court of Session. It further appears from the judgment of the High Court that the learned AdvocateGeneral who argued the case in support of the appeal
on behalf of the State, urged that the jurors were not
equal to the task involved in a proper determination
of the controversy. The High Court directed the trial
court to hold an inquiry and report on this asped of
the case. On a consideration of the report submitted
by that court, the High Court recorded its finding to
the tollowing effect :
"Out of the five jurors selected by the learned Sessions Judge, three had sufficient knowledge of English,
fourth knew very little English a.nd could not read the
646
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
[1958]
1957
documents produced in the case and the fifth also had
Kapi/ Deo Shukla not sufficient knowledge of English; he could under-
"·
stand a letter written in English with some difficulty
The State of and could not read English newspapers. This is what
Urtar Pradesh we find from a report made by the learned Sessions
Judge after summoning the jurors and examining
Sinha,J.
th
1
db
W
fi d h
em on a etter issue
y us.
e are satis e t at
the two jurors, Shri Sheik Ashique Ali and Shri
Farman Ali, were not in a position to decide the question of authorship of the forged documents satisfactorily. It was not merely a question of understanding
the contents of the documents produced in the case;
the jurors also had to decide whether they were written or signed by the respondent as deposed by the prosecution witnesses or not. They did not possess sufficient acquaintance with English to decide that question satisfactorily."
On that finding, 'it is clear that the appellant's contention that it was a trial coram non ;udice is well-founded. This case is analogous to the case of Ras Behari
Lal v. The Kind Emperor('), which went up to the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, from a judgment of the Patna High Court confirming the conviction and the sentences of the accused persons on a
charge of murder and rioting. In that case, the trial
was by a jury of 7. The jury by a majority of six to
one found the accused guilty. The learned trial judge
accepted the verdict and sentenced some of the accused persons to death. The High Court overruled the
accused persons' contentions that there was no legal
trial because some of the jury did not know sufficient
English to follow the proceedings in Court. The Judicial Committee granted special leave to appeal on a
report made by the High Court that one of the jurors
did not know sufficient English to follow the proceedings in Court. Before the 'Judicial Committee, it was
conceded, and in their Lordships' view, . rightly, by
counsel for the prosecution that the appellants had not
been tried, and that, therefore, the convictions and
sentences could not stand. Lord Atkin, who delivered
the judgment of the Judicial Committee, made the
(t) (1933) L.R. 6o I.A. 354. 357··
S.C.R.
SUPREME COURT REPORTS
·647
following observations upon the concession made by
councel for the re~pondent:
·
"In their Lordships' opinion, this is necessarily the
correct view. They thinkthat the effect of the incompetence of a juror is to deny to the accused an essential part of the protection accorded to him by law and
that the result of the trial in the present case was a
clear miscarriage of justice. They have no doubt that
in these circumstances the conviction: and sentence
should not be allowed to stand.;' ;
In our opinion, the legal position in the instant case
is the same. It was, however, argued on behalfofthe
State Government that in the instant case, the jury had
returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty, and that,
therefore, there was no prejudice to the accused persons. It is true that the incompetence of the jury empanelled in this case was raised by the counsel for the
State Government in the High Court, but in view of
the findings arrived at by the High Court, as quoted
above, the position is clear in law that irrespective of
the result, it was no trial at all. The question of prejudice does not arise because it is not a mere irregularity, but a case of "mis-trial", as the Judicial Com-
. mittee put it. It is unfortunate that a prosecution
which has been pending so long in respect of an offence
which is said to have been committed about eleven
years ago, should end like this, but it will be open to
the State Government, if it is so advised, to take steps
for a re-trial, as was directed by the Judicial Committee in the reported case referred to above.
The appeal is, accordingly, allowed and the convictions and the sentences are set aside. We do not express any opinion on the question whether it is a fit
case for a de novo trial by a competent jury or by a
Court of Session without a jury, if the present state of
the law permits it. The matter will go back to the
High Court for such directions as may be necessary of
the High Court is moved by the Government in that
behalf.
Appeal allowed.
. 1957
Kapi/ Deo Slzuklo
v.
111e State o;
U11or Pradesh
Si11/zo, J.