This revision petition is filed by the Forest Range Officer, Kollengode against the order of discharge of the accused in C.C. No.128 of 1998 of the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Chittur. The petitioner's case is that 2nd and 3rd respondents trespassed into Government Forest, unauthorisedly and illegally collected 105 kgs of sandal wood and transported that into their factory and kept it at Southern Indian Perfumes, Vannamada, Gopalapuram without any valid documents. Forest officials inspected the stock register and seized the sandal wood from the factory, subsequently filed the above case in the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court under Sec.3(1)(1)d and e, III, V and Sec.3(1)(1) e and VI of the Kerala Forest (Amendment) Act read with Sec.27 of the Kerala Forest Act. After appearance of both parties, the learned Magistrate discharged the accused under Sec.245 Cr.P.C. Being aggrieved by that, forest Crl. Rev. Pet. No.1707 of 2008 2 range officer preferred this revision petition.
2. When a warrant case is instituted otherwise than on a police report or the accused is brought or appears before the Magistrate, he shall proceed to hear the prosecution and take all evidence as may be produced in support of the prosecution. The Magistrate may also, on application of the prosecution, issue summons to witnesses, directing them to attend or to produce any documents. Therefore, the liberty of determining the production of documents or witnesses is entirely granted to the prosecution. The Magistrate is required to take all evidence submitted by the prosecution. If upon taking evidence, the Magistrate considers for reasons to be recorded that no case against the accused has been made out, if unrebutted, warrant his conviction the Magistrate shall discharge him. Nothing in this Section prevents a Magistrate from discharging the accused at any previous stage of the case if for reasons to be recorded by the said Magistrate, he considers the charge to be groundless.
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3. The learned counsel appearing for the respondents contended that no documents were produced in the trial court to prove a prima facie case against the accused. Prosecution relied the mahazar and form No.1 report alone which itself is not sufficient to make out a case. Respondents were running a sandal wood factory with the permission of the Government.
4. In this context, I have considered whether under Sec.245(i) stage the Magistrate has to consider only the prima facie case alone. Karnataka High Court in Hukamichand Devkisen Sarda and others v. Ratanlal Rupchand Heda and others [1977 Crl. L.J. 1370] held that while considering the discharge of the accused under Sec.245(i), the Magistrate only considers the evidence of prima facie case alone. He is not required to consider the entire pros and cones of the evidence at this stage. In Century Spinning and Manufacturing Co. Ltd. and Others v. State of Maharashtra [1972 Supreme Court Case (Cri) 495] the apex court held that under Sec.245(i), the Magistrate can discharge the Crl. Rev. Pet. No.1707 of 2008 4 accused if upon taking all the evidence referred to in Sec.244, he finds that no case against the accused has been made out which, if un-rebutted, would warrant his conviction. I have perused the procedure adopted by the learned Magistrate. Prosecution examined PW1 Range Officer, Flying Squad, Puthunagaram, Chittur who detected the offence. The Range Officer, Kollengode was examined as PW2. The evidence of PW1 shows that on 20.07.1997 in the morning, he inspected South Indian Perfumes sandal wood factory at Gopalapuram and verified the stock register. At that time, he found two jute bags inside the factory. Fresh and dried sandal wood pieces weighing 105 kgs were seen in the jute bag. The 1st accused was present at the time of inspection. During interrogation, A1 told that the people of the locality brought sandal wood from Tamil Nadu by head load and he purchased it. But no documents were produced by PW1 to show that he had verified the stock register for finding out the actual quantity available in the factory and how much is the excess quantity found in the factory Crl. Rev. Pet. No.1707 of 2008 5 premises. PW1 prepared Ext.P1 mahazar. PW2 registered a crime and submitted formal report, which was marked in the trial court as Ext.P2. Even though PW1 submitted that he conducted search inside the factory, no independent witnesses were cited as witnesses at the time of preparing Ext.P1 seizure mahazar.
5. Analysing the nature of seizure and the facts and circumstances of the case, the trial court rightly discharged the accused. It is pertinent to note that under Sec.245(i), nothing in the Section shall be deemed to prevent a Magistrate from discharging the accused at any previous stage of the case for reasons to be recorded by the Magistrate if he considers the charge to be ground less. Therefore, if the Magistrate feels that the charge is groundless and no materials are available in the case records to proceed with on the charge, he has to prevent undue harassment of the accused persons. At this moment, it is open to the Magistrate to discharge the case without taking any evidence if he is otherwise satisfied on the materials that the charge is groundless. Crl. Rev. Pet. No.1707 of 2008 6 This discretion granted by law to a Magistrate has to be protected while invoking the revisional jurisdiction by the High Court. There is no illegality or irregularity in the finding of the learned Magistrate.
There is no merit in this revision petition and it is dismissed accordingly.
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