( 1 ) WE are disposing of all these criminal appeals by this common judgment as it is convenient and advantageous to deal with all these together. They relate to three different criminal cases charge-sheeted before the Court of Special Judge, Shimla, established for trial of offences under the prevention of Corruption Act.

( 2 ) IN each of these three cases, officials of the State Government were arrayed along with private persons for facing charge for offences under section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code read with Sections 218, 379, 467, 468, 471, 419 of the Indian Penal Code, besides Section 33 of the Indian forest Act and also Section 5 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947. During the pendency of the trial of these cases, some of the accused arrayed have died and the criminal proceedings became abated in respect of those persons. The trial proceeded as against the remaining accused and ultimately the trial Judge convicted the accused in all the three cases principally under section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code and also for different other counts of offences linked to criminal conspiracy. All of them were sentenced to different terms of imprisonment under different counts. The three cases were disposed of by three separate judgments.

( 3 ) THE convicted persons filed appeals before the High Court of himachal Pradesh challenging the conviction and sentence imposed on them. A learned Single Judge of the High Court disposed of all the appeals by three different judgments vis-a-vis the three judgments of the trial court and set aside the conviction and sentence and acquitted all the accused. These appeals have been preferred by the State of Himachal Pradesh by special leave.

( 4 ) THE common features of all the three cases are the following: criminal conspiracies had been hatched by timber merchants and private landowners with the government officials arrayed as accused in each case for the purpose of felling and misappropriating the trees standing on government lands; pursuant to the said criminal conspiracy in each case a large number of trees standing on the government land were cut. Before the timber disappeared beyond the ken of catch, the other government officials acted swiftly and intercepted the contraband articles and thereafter, cases were registered in respect of the above acts and after completing the investigation, challan was filed in each case.

( 5 ) IT appears that there is no dispute on the fact that the timber seized belonged to the trees felled from different plots of lands alleged by the prosecution. The focus of the prosecution was to show that those trees stood on government lands and that all the accused persons knew very well that those trees could not be cut and removed on the pretext that they stood on private lands. The prosecution attempted to adduce evidence to show that the trees were cut from government lands.

( 6 ) THE approach made by the learned Single Judge of the High Court in all the three cases was this: the officials/accused in the case, particularly those who belonged to the Revenue Department, made a demarcation for indicating the boundary of the lands separating the private lands from the government lands and, admittedly, the trees were cut only from those sites which were shown as per the said demarcation as private lands. Learned single Judge proceeded on the reasoning that so long as the said demarcation stood, it was valid under law until the same was set aside by subsequent proceedings and that as there were no such subsequent proceedings to set aside the alleged demarcation conducted by the revenue officials pursuant to which the trees were cut and removed, no offence could be attributed either to those officials or to the private individuals who acted on the strength of such demarcation. For strengthening the said finding, learned Single Judge relied on the decision of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh in Radha soami Satsang Beas v. State of H. P.

( 7 ) AFTER hearing