Supreme Court restores acquittal of telephone cashier in breach of trust case: entrustment not proved, High Court shifted burden
The question: Whether the High Court was right to reverse the acquittal when the prosecution had not placed the cashbook, daily registers and audit report on record
The Supreme Court has set aside a Bombay High Court judgment that reversed the acquittal of a telephone department cashier under Section 409 of the Indian Penal Code and restored the trial Court's acquittal. A Bench of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Atul S. Chandurkar held that the prosecution had not proved entrustment of the money, misappropriation or dishonest intention, and that the High Court had wrongly shifted the burden on the accused. The appellant was a Cashier-cum-Counter Clerk with the Telephone Department at Aurangabad. According to the prosecution, between 01.07.1993 and 09.10.1993 he collected telephone charges of Rs 8,73,737 from customers. Of this, Rs 3,88,035 was said to have been credited to the Government account late, and Rs 4,75,702 was said not to have been credited at all. On a complaint by the Assistant Accounts Officer on 11.10.1993, a case was registered under Sections 409, 477 and 420 of the Penal Code, and a charge under Section 409 alone was framed. The trial Court acquitted him on 20.02.2002, finding the evidence vague and general, the registers not exhibited, and the seizure of forty-six articles from his house not in line with Section 100(7) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. In Criminal Appeal No. 278 of 2002, the High Court reversed the acquittal on 12.10.2017 and sentenced him to one year's rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 5,000, with one month's further imprisonment in default. The appellant came to the Supreme Court in Criminal Appeal No. 1432 of 2019.