1. The appellant, a Taxation Clerk working in the Municipal Committee, Sangrur, faced trial along with Madan Lal, Cashier for having embezzled a sum of Rs 1885.50, collected by the former from the taxpayers and having not deposited the same in the account of the Committee. Charge under Section 409 IPC was framed against both. The trial court convicted both the accused, but the lower appellate court acquitted Madan Lal, Cashier, maintaining the conviction of the appellant. Since his revision petition before the High Court failed, he is before us as the appellant.
2. The case of the prosecution is that on 30-3-1981, the appellant received the amount in question as arrears of tax from some taxpayers. The said sum was required to be deposited in the funds of the Municipal Committee, Sangrur through Madan Lal, Cashier but no such deposit was made and the sum was embezzled. On probe, defalcation being detected, the appellant himself deposited in November 1981 the aforesaid amount in the Municipal Committee funds. The cashier made no such exercise. Since the amount had not been deposited on the date of the receipt or a day thereafter i.e on 31-3-1981, the appellant on that basis had to face the charge even though deposit had been made by him later in November 1981. There was thus breach of trust of the said sum, punishable under Section 409 IPC since the appellant was a public servant.
3. The area of controversy is very small. The appellant admits the receipt of the sum but says that as per usual practice, he had handed over the same to the cashier and it is the cashier who had defalcated. As said before, the cashier has been acquitted by the lower appellate court because he did not admit having received any money from the appellant and his word was not discarded by the court. He did not admit even the existence of such practice of handing over sums to the cashier without receipt. The accountant produced at the trial as a prosecution witness also did not depose anything to that effect. An effort was made at the trial later to have him summoned and bring some records from which it could be inferred that the sum had been received by the cashier and had been reckoned in some of the rough notes prepared by him on 31-3-1981. The prayer of the appellant was rejected. It does not seem to have been reiterated either before the lower appellate court or the High Court but effort here has been renewed before us. We would not entertain such prayer of the appellant at this later stage. This aspect is put to rest.
4. It appears to us that the prosecution was successful in proving the charge against the appellant. The entrustment as such is not denied by the appellant. It was for him to discharge the onus that he had discharged the trust as was expected of him. By merely taking the plea that he had passed on the sum to the cashier, the trust cannot be said to have been discharged and could only be done if either the cashier would admit receipt or the appellant had reasonably established that there had been a practice to pass on such money without receipt. No departmental man, least of all the accountants, has come forward to support the existence of such practice. The appellant cannot be permitted to say that whatever he had said in his statement under Section 313 CrPC is the gospel truth. The argument of the appellant that the cashier was wrongly acquitted may be plausible, but in the facts and circumstances that fact alone can be of no help to the appellant.
5. Therefore, for the aforestated reasons, we find no scope to interfere in this appeal. The appeal is accordingly dismissed.