Penal Code, 1860: ss. 201, 380, 435, 457 and 477 rw s. 120B – Theft of cash from the Bank – Criminal conspiracy – Prosecution of three employees of the Bank, for offences of theft of Rs. Six Lakhs from the safe and strong room of the Bank, house-trespass, destruction of valuable security, and other offences – Main accused persons A1 and A2 convicted and sentenced concurrently on the basis of the oral and documentary evidence, as per which the money is proved to have been recovered from their possession – Appellant, head cashier in the custody of one of the keys of the dual locker system maintained by the Bank, convicted and sentenced for the very same offences only with the aid of s. 120B – Trial court convicted and sentenced the appellant u/ss. 201, 380, 435, 457 and 477 rw s. 120B – High Court confirmed the conviction, however reduced the sentence u/s. 201 – On appeal, held: There is neither any overt act attributable to the appellant, nor any recovery of stolen property from him – Failure of the prosecution to produce any evidence whatsoever to satisfy the Court that there was a prior meeting of minds between the appellant and A-1 and A-2 which is quintessential for a charge u/s. 120-B – No physical manifestation of such a concurrence extractable from surrounding circumstances, declarations, or the conduct of the appellant – Also, the Court has cautioned against replacing mere suspicion with the legal requirement of proof of agreement – Furthermore, the prosecution failed to establish the circumstances in which the appellant, being the custodian of only one set of the keys for the dual lock system functional in the Bank, could alone be made responsible for providing access to the strong room and the safe in the Bank – Thus, in the absence of an agreement between the parties, even by inference through circumstantial evidence, the appellant entitled to be acquitted of the charge of criminal conspiracy – Order by the courts below, quashed and set aside.
State of Kerala v. P. Sugathan and Anr. (2000) 8 SCC
203 : [2000] 3 Suppl. SCR 409; State (NCT of Delhi) v. Navjot Sandhu (2005) 11 SCC 600 : [2005] 2 Suppl. SCR 79; Tanviben Pankajkumar Divetia v. State of Gujarat (1997) 7 SCC 156 : [1997] 1 Suppl. SCR 96; Ram Narayan Popli v. CBI (2003) 3 SCC 641 : [2003]
1 SCR 119 - referred to.
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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