Page 185 - ELT_1st June 2020_VOL 372_Part 5th

2020 ] UNION OF INDIA v. KISAN RATAN SINGH 719

have no quarrels with the preposition submitted by Ms. Mane. The issue is, can
that statement be accepted blindly without corroboration, and the answer is no.
11. One more point which comes to my mind is if the panch witnesses
have not been produced, what is the evidence to satisfy that the said premises is
where the respondents were found. I have to also note that an electricity bill in
the name of Jayantilal Pandya has been seized from the said premises by prose-
cution. The said Jayantilal Pandya has not been summoned and no effort has also
been made to trace this Jayantilal Pandya. The prosecution should have also, par-
ticularly when there were some other persons present when the raid took place,
collected documentary evidence as well as record the statements of the people
residing in the adjoining rooms to find out who this Jayantilal Pandya was.
Moreover, it is stated that there is a telephone connection in the said premises,
but in whose name the telephone connection was and why the prosecution did
not make any effort to trace out the subscriber of the telephone, is also not ex-
plained. So therefore, no effort has been made to establish occupancy of the said
premises by the two respondents. There is no evidence to even show how re-
spondents were in occupation of the said premises, whether they were on leave
and license basis or they were trespassers or they owned the premises. There is
no evidence brought on record to clarify and factually establish the specific oc-
cupancy of room no. 12 by respondents.
12. The Apex Court in Chandrappa & Ors. v. State of Karnataka [(2007) 4
SCC 415] in paragraph 42 has laid down the general principles regarding powers
of the Appellate Court while dealing with an appeal against an order of acquittal.
Paragraph 42 reads as under :
42. From the above decisions, in our considered view, the following gen-
eral principles regarding powers of appellate Court while dealing with an
appeal against an order of acquittal emerge;
(1) An appellate Court has full power to review, reappreciate and
reconsider the evidence upon which the order of acquittal is found-
ed;
(2) The Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 puts no limitation, re-
striction or condition on exercise of such power and an appellate
Court on the evidence before it may reach its own conclusion, both
on questions of fact and of law;
(3) Various expressions, such as, ‘substantial and compelling rea-
sons’, ‘good and sufficient grounds’, ‘very strong circumstances’,
‘distorted conclusions’, ‘glaring mistakes’, etc. are not intended to
curtail extensive powers of an appellate Court in an appeal against
acquittal. Such phraseologies are more in the nature of ‘flourishes of
language’ to emphasize the reluctance of an appellate Court to in-
terfere with acquittal than to curtail the power of the Court to re-
view the evidence and to come to its own conclusion.
(4) An appellate Court, however, must bear in mind that in case of
acquittal, there is double presumption in favour of the the accused.
Firstly, the presumption of innocence available to him under the
fundamental principle of criminal jurisprudence that every person
shall be presumed to be innocent unless he is proved guilty by a
competent court of law. Secondly, the accused having secured his
acquittal, the presumption of his innocence is further reinforced, re-
affirmed and strengthened by the trial court.
EXCISE LAW TIMES  1st June 2020  185