Judgment

SHELAT, J.:- This appeal is by special leave and is directed against the dismissal by the High Court of Patna of a Criminal Revision Application by the appellants against their conviction under Sections 379 and 143 of the Penal Code ordered by the Trial Magistrate and confirmed by the First Additional Sessions Judge, Arrah.

2. The respondent (complainant) was the purchaser of plot No. 811 in Village Chakni, District Shahabad, at an auction sale held in 1954 in execution proceedings arising from a rent suit filed by Dumraon Raj against its tenant, Ram Dheyan Teli. Ram Dheyan died leaving him surviving two widows, Mst. Rekhia and Mst. Sita Devi. The respondent claimed that in pursuance of the said auction sale he applied to the court for possession and physical possession was delivered to him through the court s bailiff on September 24, 1954. According to him, he remained in possession of the said plot till the date of the incident in question, that is, March 24, 1962. A day prior to that day, i. e. on March 23, 1962, he had applied to the police that he expected trouble from the appellants, and therefore, the police officer had stationed in the said plot two persons, Kesho Prasad (P. W. 3) and Sheo Lakhan Ahir (P. W. 2) to watch the crop sown by him. The respondent s case was that early in the morning on March 24, 1962, the appellants together with a large number of persons differently armed, came to the field and notwithstanding protests by P. W. 3 and his said companion, forcibly harvested the standing crop worth about Rs. 500/- and took it away.

3. On these allegations the appellants were tried under Sections 379 and 143 of the Penal Code. The Trial Magistrate held (a) that the plot was in possession of the respondent on the date of the incident, (b) that he had sown the said crop, and (c) that the appellants forcibly took away the said crop. On these findings he convicted the appellants under Sections 379 and 143. These findings were confirmed by the Additional Sessions Judge in an appeal by the appellants, who also upheld the said order of conviction and sentence. The High Court dismissed the revision application filed by the appellants simply on the ground that it could not interfere with concurrent findings of fact given by the Trial Magistrate and agreed to the Additional Sessions Judge.

4. In arriving at the aforesaid findings, both the Trial Court as also the Additional Sessions Judge appear to have been impressed by the evidence of the respondent and Kesho Prasad (P.W. 3) that the respondent was in actual possession of the field on the day of the incident. This conclusion in turn was arrived at from the writ of possession issued in the execution proceedings taken out by Dumraon Raj after its suit had been decreed, the report of the bailiff on the said writ that he had delivered possession of the plot in question to the respondent, the respondent s endorsement thereon acknowledging delivery of possession to him, and lastly, production by the respondent in the Trial Court of certain rent receipts from which it was deduced that these receipts must have been handed over to the respondent at the time when possession of plot No. 811 was delivered to him.

5. Ordinarily, this Court in an appeal under Article 136 of the Constitution is reluctant to reopen concurrent findings of fact arrived at by the Trial Court and the appellate Court. In this particular case, however, we have come to the conclusion after having been taken through certain court proceedings and other documentary evidence that attention properly due to that evidence was not paid, resulting in the misjudgment of the respective positions of the parties.

6. The appellants case all throughout was that although the plot in question was auction-sold in pursuance of the decree in the aforesaid rent suit the second window of the said Ram Dheyan Teli, Mst. Sita Devi, had consistently asserted right from the beginning that the said decree was not binding upon her as