JUDGMENT

Shadi Lal, C J - The appellant, Mian Taj Mohammad, has been found guilty of having committed prejury in a judicial proceeding and has been sentenced under Section 193, I.P.C., to suffer rigorous imprisonment for seven years and to pay a fine of Rs. 5,000.

2. The prosecution arose out of a transaction which took place more than nine years ago, and in order to appreciate the question of law and facts, upon which I have to pronounce my opinion, it is necessary to give a short sketch of the various events which have a bearing upon the case for the prosecution. On 28th July 1918, Sayed Nadir Hussain Shah, the Tahsildar of Bahalwal, in the Shahpur District, visited the village of Behk Lurka, in the south of the tahsil, to enlist recruits for the army. He was accompanied by the appellant Taj Mohammad, a zaildar of another village called; Mela, and several other persons, and was received at the village boundary by the, lambardar, the zaildar, and other inhabitants of the village. The Tahsildar went to the village daira and partook of some refreshment. Shortly afterwards, a large number of villagers, who were evidently dissatisfied with the methods adopted by the Tahsildar, in his compaign recruiting, came armed with bludgeons and hatchets and attacked him and his companions with the weapons. The Tahsildar sustained severe wounds to which he succumbed on the spot. Of his companions, Taj Mohammad received a large number of injuries including compound fractures of the bones of an arm and escaped death by concealing himself in a mosque. From this place of safety he did not emerge until after the arrival of the police.

3. It appears that as a result of the panic which ensued, practically the whole of the village was deserted, but the few persons who could be found were asked to appear before a Magistrate Khan Ahmad Hassan Khan, who recorded their statements. The appellant, Taj Mohammad, also was examined by the Magistrate, first on 28th July 1918, and again on 5th August 1918, and the latter statement has been relied upon by the prosecution in support of the charge of perjury.

4. A few months after the tragedy, 30 persons, who were arrested for complicity in the murder, were tried by a tribunal of three Commissioners constituted under the Defence of India Act, 4 of 1915, and Taj Mohammad was one of the witnesses examined by the tribunal on behalf of the prosecution. The deposition of Taj Mohammad was recorded on 7th and 9th December 1918, and this deposition has been produced as an exhibit in the present case.

5. The tribunal decided the case in January 1919, but there were still some persons who were alleged to have participated in the assault on the Tahsildar and could not be tried at that time, as they were fugitives from justice. These men were arrested several years afterwards, and the question of their guilt depended upon their identification by certain persons who claimed to be the eyewitnesses of the assault on the Tahsildar. In the course of the enquiry held by a Magistrate into the case against certain accused persons, Taj Mohammad was produced as a witness for the Crown on 16th May 1925 and it is the statement made by him on that day that is alleged to be false.

6. The portion of the statement, which forms the subject of the indictment, is to the effect that he could not identify three accused, namely, Jallu, Amir and Salehon, and that he could not say that he had known them before. Now, a perusal of Section 191, I.P.C., which defines the offence of "giving false evidence," shows that in order to sustain an indictment for perjury the prosecution must establish inter alia, two things: (1) that the statement was false; (2) that it was known or believed to be false or not believed to be true. In other words, the statement must be intentionally false.

7. Let us now examine the evidence in order to see whether these requirements of the law have been fulfilled in the present case. It must be remembered that we are not dealing here w