The main legal point established in the judgment is the interpretation of 'valuable security' under S.30 IPC and the legality of officers' actions in inspecting account books under the Sales Tax Act.

1. The three appellants together with four others were tried by the Sessions Judge of Kozhikode for the offences under S.147, 332, 307 and 477 of the IPC. The case against them was that they formed themselves into an unlawful assembly with the common object of assaulting certain officers of the Sales Tax Department who were conducting a surprise inspection of the shop belonging to one of the accused and in furtherance of that object they caused hurt to one officer and attempted to murder another and also snatched away the account books of the shop which had been taken by the officers for inspection. The learned judge acquitted four of the accused persons and convicted the appellants for offences under S.332 and 477 sentencing each to rigorous imprisonment for a period of one year on the first count and four years under the second, the sentences to run concurrently.

2. The prosecution case briefly is this: Pws.1, 2 and 3 are Intelligence Officers attached to the Kozhikode Circle of the. Sales Tax Department. While conducting surprise inspections of shops to detect cases of Sales Tax evasion, they entered the shop of the first appellant (accused 1). Pw.1 asked the accused to produce his account books for inspection, to which the latter replied that the books were not available, in the shop. In the meanwhile Pws. 2 and 3 noticing an open bag with account books kept in another room entered the room and brought out the bag. They then began to examine the books. Accused 3 who had come to the shop by this time declared that the books were his and demanded their return. When the officers refused the demand and continued their examination, the third accused hit Pws. 2 and 3 on their hands causing them to drop the books on the floor. Then some of the persons who had gathered there began assaulting them while some others collected the fallen books and papers and handed them over to accused 3 who carried them away. During the assault Pw.1 fell down on the floor. Then accused 1 got up on his chest and began to throttle him. Pw. 4 a peon who had accompanied the officers seeing them assaulted rushed up to the nearby police station and reported the matter to the Sub Inspector. The latter immediately proceeded to the scene and dispersing the crowd, rescued the officers.

3. All the accused except accused 1 denied having had anything to do with the incident. According to accused 1 when he was sitting in the shop - which he says does not belong to him - with a bag entrusted to him by accused 3, the three officers and Pw. 4 entered the shop. They took the bag and paying no heed to his protest they started to walk away with it. When he tried to snatch it from them, they assaulted him. Afterwards the police arrived there and arrested him.

4. Shri V.R. Krishna Iyer the learned counsel for the defence attacked the judgment on more grounds than one. We shall first deal with the contention that the conviction under S.477, IPC. for having secreted 'valuable security' cannot be sustained in that the account books, the accused are alleged to have secreted, cannot be considered 'valuable security'. It may be noted here that the books snatched away from the officers have not been recovered. Nor do any of the witnesses say that they can remember any of the entries therein. All that is alleged by the prosecution is that the books were account books and since the defence do not deny this, the arguments proceeded on the basis that the books concerned were the ordinary account books usually found in every place of business. The defence contention is that such books do not come under the definition of valuable security given in S.30 IPC. The term valuable security is defined thus:

"The words 'valuable security' denote a document which is, or purports to be, a document whereby any legal right is created, extended, transferred, restricted, extinguished or released or whereby any person acknowledges that he lies under legal liability, or has not a certain leg