The main legal point established is that the presence of evidence, even if not sufficient for conviction, is grounds for the trial to proceed and not for quashing the charges.

Baker—These are four applications for quashing the charges framed against the applicants in a pending case by a first class Magistrate of Yeotmal. The applications have been heard together and may be disposed of together.

2. The applicants are being tried for forgery of valuable securities and using forged documents as genuine under Ss. 467 and 471 and abetement of the said offences under S. 109, Indian Penal Code, the case arising out of four kabuliyats said to be forged. Madhav Bhagwant is the plaintiff in a civil suit in which the alleged forged documents were produced ; Vinayak is the person from whose custody they were produced ; and Laxman and Abdul Razak are the attesting witnesses. Madhav Bhagwant has been charged under Ss. 109, 167 and 471 ; Vinayak is similarly charged ; and the attesting witnesses are charged under Ss. 467 and 471, I.P.C.

3. The High Court has power to interfere in pending case, but such a power is only to be exercised in exceptional circumstances, as is shown by the cases quoted on behalf of the applicants, viz., Choa Lal Dass v. Anant Pershad Misser, 1898 25 ILR(Cal) 233 and Ramanathan Chettuar v. Sivarama Subrahmanya, 1925 AIR(Mad) 39. The latter of these cases lays down that the circumstance which will justify the interference of the High Court have not been and cannot be laid down with precision. While the Judges here repeatedly held that only when exceptional grounds exist the High Court ought to interfere, the decided oases show that no hard and fast rule can be laid down, but that when in the interests of justice the High Court's intervention became necessary, it was not refused. In the Calcutta case it is stated that without meaning to lay down any hard and fast rule, which it is impossible as it is undesirable to do upon a question like this, we think we may say that one safe practical test would be this, namely, that a bare statement of the facts of the case without any elaborate argument should be sufficient to convince this Court that it is a fit one for its interference at an intermediate stage.

4. I may here say that a case of this Court Krishnarao v. Emperor,1921 AIR(Nag) 47 was a case of a very exceptional character, in which the Crown admitted that even if the prosecution evidence were accepted it would not show any criminal offence on the part of the accused, and therefore no opposition was offered to the quashing of the proceedings.

5. The main ground on which the present applications are based is that there is no evidence whatever against the applicants of having been concerned in the forgery, assuming forgery has been committed; and although, I shall as far as possible, refrain from expressing any option as to the evidence it will he necessary to briefly look at the evidence which has bean already recorded in order to see whether, if believed, it would establish a prima facie ease against the accused. The facts which have led up to this case are briefly as follows.

6. The plaintiff Madhav Bhagwant is an Izardar. He was formerly the Mukhtyar of his grandmother Gangabai, to whose estate he succeeded. Ho brought a suit to recover possession of land, survey No. 27, from one Bala, alleging him to be an annual tenant. Bala pleaded that he was a tenant of antiquity. The suit went in appeal and in the meantime the Berar Alienated Villages Tenancy Law of 1921 came into force, by S. 47 of which it was provided that a tenant who at the commencement of this law had held land continuously from a date previous to the first day of June 1895, shall be deemed to be a permanent tenant of such land. The suit was remanded in order that an enquiry might be held as to whether the defendant Bala fulfilled the conditions of this section. After the remand the plaintiff Madhav Bhagwant made an application to the Court that he had learnt that there were some kabuliats in the possession of one Vinayak, a former Mukhtyar of his grandmother, Gangabai, which would show that Bala or his family were not in