Abhayanand Mishra

Vs.

The State of Bihar

(AIR 1959 Pat328)

Facts:

The appellant was convicted unders section 420/511 of indian penal code. The charge was that the
appellant had attempted to cheat the university by submitting bogus applications to give the MA exam
of 1954 although he was barred to take any university exam as he was found using unfair means during
his BA examination test at tejnarain jubilee college at Bhagalpur. In his bogus applications the appellant
claimed that after completing his BA examination he was working as a teacher at jaglal vidyalaya at
Bhagalpur. He fabricated bogus signatures of the head master of jaglal vidyalaya, the district inspector of
schools Bhagalpur, the divisional inspector of schools Bhagalpur division. The registrar of the university
without checking approved the application and sent the confirmation to the appellant so that he could
submit his final application along with photographs. In furtherance of this admit cards were forwarded
to the principal of the tejnarain jubilee college Bhagalpur who was the designated superintendent of
examinations. In may 1954 the university came to know through routine inspection that abhayanand
Mishra wasn’t eligible to give the MA examination as he had not even completed his BA studies yet. So
the university requested the principa; of tejnarain jubilee college to return all admit cards and in them
was found the appellant’s admit card. A letter was sent to the appellants village address telling him to
submit his original BA diploma after which a telegram for the same was also issued to the same address.
The university received no reply from the appellant and thereafter the registrar of the university
removed the appellants name from the roll of the examinees and also sent a written report to the
pirbahore police station at patna and thereafter the first information was filed. The police after its own
investigation prepared the charge sheet, the appellant was charged under section 465 and 420/511 of
the indian penal code. The judge held that there was not sufficient cause and evidence for applying
section 465 but the appellant was convicted under section 420/511.

Issues:

The defence taken by the appellant was a plea of innocence. The appellant alleged that he one naresh
mohan Mishra, his enemy, was responsible for sending forged documents to the university and was also
alleged to be the man to inform the university of the said events. The defence argued that there was no
connection between the applications sent to the university and the appellant.

Arguments:
The defence argued that the only thing connecting the forged applications with the appellant was the
opinion of the government handwriting expert who compared the signatures on the forged applications
with the samples obtained from the appellant and the expert witness from the appellant’s side mr
bennet said that the disputed signatures do not match. The prosecution argued that mr bennet had an
unconscious bias as he was already paid in full before appearing in court and knew in his mind what to
do after taking the money. The second argument was how did the alleged conspirator naresh Mishra get
hold of the photographs of the appellant and that the appellant should have taken some action upon
receiving to absolve his liability upon receiving letters from the university on his home address but in
reality he failed to alert anyone of his innocence and instead applied for a BA entrance exam in some
other university. Moreover, the fact that the applications contained the registration number of the
appellant from his BA examination shows that any stranger would not go to such lengths to frame the
appellant when he could’ve done so with much less effort. The defence also argued that the appellant
did not take the admit card out of the possession of the principal of tejnarain jubilee college Bhagalpur
although a lot of the examinees already collected the cards so this must show that the appellant was not
even aware of the existence of the admit card but the other side argued that the appellant had
specifically mentioned in his application that he wanted to give the exam in muzaffarpur and did not
know that the admit card would have to be collected from the principal’s office.

Judgment:

After reviewing the circumstances and considering the handwriting experts opinion the judge was of the
view that evidence of the expert was successfully corroborated and the judges were satisfied that the
appellant was the one who signed the applications and agreed that the additional sessions judge was
right in charging the appellant under section 420/511 of the indian penal code. In result the appeal
failed and was dismissed and the conviction of the appellant was upheld.

Learning Outcome:

learned how section 511 of the indian penal code is used to charge the attempt of a crime given under
the indian penal code whose punishment for attempt is not specifically defined and does not carry the
death punishment.