State by Vemgal Police Vs. Seenappa - Court Judgment

Excerpt:

.....of the deficient portion of the proper duty as penalty - held, the impugned order was passed by the trial court in exercise of the power under the proviso to section 34 of the karnataka stamp act, 1957. according to clause (a) of the said proviso, when the amount of the proper duty or deficient portion thereof exceeds five rupees, the penalty to be imposed is a sum equal to ten times such duty or portion. there is no discretion granted to the court to impose a lesser penalty. - the submission canvassed by the learned state public prosecutor was that some level of infirmities would always be present as it would be difficult to find a perfect case but that the substratum of the evidence is what accounts and that if all of this is carefully compiled after rejecting that which is required to be culled, that the charges could still be brought home. in principle, the learned counsel is right when he points out that a court is required to go through this exercise and salvage the good from the not so good material but in the present instance after having heard the learned counsel on merits and having examined the record area by area, we find certain difficulties in our way......it is true that this is another prosecution under section 302, indian penal code where an acquittal has resulted principally because of several factors, the first being the aspect of delay and a series of inter se inconsistencies coupled with the usual credibility problem. the submission canvassed by the learned state public prosecutor was that some level of infirmities would always be present as it would be difficult to find a perfect case but that the substratum of the evidence is what accounts and that if all of this is carefully compiled after rejecting that which is required to be culled, that the charges could still be brought home. in principle, the learned counsel is right when he points out that a court is required to go through this exercise and salvage the good from the not so good material but in the present instance after having heard the learned counsel on merits and having examined the record area by area, we find certain difficulties in our way. the infirmities are not only superficial but several of them are rather deep seated. secondly, even though we have gone through the exercise of considering the effect of whatever material could be looked at safely, in.....