The court held that a case may be transferred from one place to another if there is a reasonable apprehension of bias in the minds of the accused or if the local atmosphere is not conducive to a fair and impartial trial.

Judgment

VIVIAN BOSE J. : This is an application under S. 527 of the Criminal Procedure Code for the transfer of a criminal case from Jashpurnagar in the State of Madhya Pradesh to some other State, preferably New Delhi or Orissa, and for a request that the case be tried by a "superior Court" such as a District Magistrate or a Sessions Judge.

2. The case is a prosecution for defamation under Ss. 501 and 502 of the Indian Penal Code read with S. 34.

3. The complainant is a member of the royal family of Jashpur. He resides at Jashpurnagar.

4. There are now seven accused, all of whom are Roman Catholics except one who is a Jacobite Christian. Originally, there were nine but one died and one other does not appear to have joined in the application, so that leaves seven who have.

5. The accused are scattered over India and reside at Nagpur (Bombay State), Patna (Bihar), Allahabad (Uttar Pradesh) and Raigarh (Madhya Pradesh). Two of them are priests and one a bishop. The rest are laymen.

6. The complainant alleges that the accused were concerned is one way and another with bringing out several publications that attacked the publication known as the Niyogi Report and sought to question the accuracy of the statements made in it. In doing so they defamed the complainant, and in his complaint the complainant sets out the passages of which he complains.

7. But the complainant has not rested content with passages that are said to defame him personally. He has gone on to claim that

"similar aspersions have been cast else-where against the high and low officers of the Government administration. These clearly indicate the intention of the accused to influence the people to doubt the veracity of the judgments delivered in favour of the complainant to perpetuate a sense of false moral culpability against the complainant in spite of his legal exoneration."

Now we are not concerned with the truth or otherwise of these allegations but they do form material that might lead the accused to believe, along with other matter to which we shall refer presently, that the complainant is trying here to bias the magistracy and other officers, "high and low", against them.

8. Among the grounds of transfer are certain allegations made against the learned trying Magistrate. It seems that a complaint was made against the complainant by certain Christians at Jashpurnagar early in 1955 in Criminal Case No. 5 of 1955 for desecrating a Christian church there. The first Court convicted him but released him under S. 562 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The complainant appealed and the appeal was heard by the Magistrate who is trying the present matter, Shri K. T. Damle. He disbelieved the prosecution evidence and, relying on the defence evidence, acquitted the complainant on November 6, 1956, in Criminal Appeal No. 1 of 1956. It is said that this indicates bias or, at any rate, creates a reasonable apprehension of bias in the minds of the accused. We are unable to draw any such inference nor do we think that an apprehension based on such a ground is reasonable. We discourage such accusations and would be extremely slow to allow a transfer on such a ground. We do not think it necessary to call upon the learned Magistrate for an explanation because we reject this ground outright.

9. We also reject outright the allegation that the accused will not get a fair trial any where in Madhya Pradesh. That is much too wide and sweeping a statement and we can find nothing on the record to justify such an apprehension. There are large areas of the new State of Madhya Pradesh that had no concern with the old State and we can find nothing to justify a fear that Courts in areas like Bhopal, Gwalior or Indore, or even in other areas of the old Madhya Pradesh remote from the immediate scene of controversy, would be influenced by events that happened in and around Jashpur and the neighbouring areas. But we do feel that good grounds for transfer from Jashpurnagar are made out because of the bitterness