King Emperor vs Virammal and Others

Oldfield, J.—In this case we are asked, to revise the order of acquittal of the first accused of an offence punishable u/s 82(c) of the Indian Registration Act, false personation and admission in an assumed character of the execution of a document, and the third and fourth accused of abetment thereof. It is unnecessary to go further into the facts, than to say that the learned public Prosecutor has based his argument before us exclusively on certain finger-prints. A number of finger-prints were taken at the various stages of the proceedings before and during the trial. We are now asked to set aside the acquittal solely with reference to Exhibit B and Exhibit N.

We could in fact deal with the case very shortly, if the lower Court had not taken up an attitude and entered on general considerations, which we think are unsound and which it is necessary to correct. The attitude of the lower Court was in effect a refusal to exercise its own judgment on the finger-prints at all and an attempt to discredit the evidence of the third prosecution witness, the finger-print expert, on general grounds That attitude and refusal may have been due to its reluctance to enter into what is generally described as the "Science" of finger-prints or to come to close quarters with the evidence of a person described as "an expert." But in fact there is nothing in the so-called science of finger-prints or the qualifications of an expert in it, which need have deterred the lower Court from applying its own magnifying glass or its own eyes and its own mind to the evidence and verifying the results submitted to it by the witness. For the argument in finger-print cases rests on a simple deduction from a number of observations of the similarities and differences between the finger-prints in question the probabilities approaching more or less closely to certainty as those similarities or differences are many or few. It is of course a different question to be answered according to the circumstances of the particular case and the clearness of the finger-prints available whether such similarities or differences are established; and to that we shall apply ourselves in the sequel.

The lower Court has first justified its attitude by reference to Emperor v. Abdul Hamid ILR (1905) Cal. 759. But the Judgments in that case show that the learned Judges there entered on an inspection of the finger-prints before them and were unable to base any argument on them, only because they were too indistinct to support the expert''s conclusion. There is then the observation of Henderson, J., to the effect that a conviction based on finger-prints alone would be unsafe; and similarly that of the learned Judge in Bazari Hajam v. King-Emperor I.L.R.(1922) Pat. 242. With all respect we cannot take that view. For if the finger-prints are clear enough to sustain an argument, there is no reason why an argument by way of deduction should not be as sure a foundation for a conclusion and it may be a better one than any based on direct evidence. The portion first referred to in Emperor v. Abdul Hamid ILR (1905) Cal. 759, was relied on by Seshagiri Ayyar, J., in In re Singri Bhima (1915) 27 I.C. 900. But I am unable with all deference to follow the learned Judge''s mathematical demonstration based on a quotation apparently from Sir E.R. Henry''s work on Finger-Prints, page 61, and think that he must have been misreported.

Turning now to the evidence in the present case and to the finger-prints, Exhibits N and B, with which alone the learned Public Prosecutor asks us to deal, we have examined them to the best of our ability and are unable to reach any affirmative conclusion with reference to them. There is no doubt a general similarity between the two finger-prints. But Exhibit N is so blurred that no verification by counting the lines in it for comparison with the number in the same position in Exhibit B is possible. This may be due to the fact that the first accused had injured her thumb, voluntarily or not, before Exhibit N was taken. However this may be, in the absence of anything on which an argument strong enough to exclude reasonable doubt can be based, we cannot interfere with the lower Court''s conclusion. The appeal is dismissed.

Ramesam, J.

I agree and I wish to add a few words with reference to the quotation in Seshagiri Ayyar, J.''s judgment in In re Singri Bhima (1915) 27 I.C. 900. What Edward Henry states at page 50 of his book is, that the chance of finding one particular distinguishing mark is one in four. It follows from this that the chance of finding the combination of distinguishing marks is one in 46 or 4,096. I think this is what the learned Judge intended to state and what appears as 46 is a mistake for 46, When the learned Judge states that "Two out of four persons will have one distinguishing mark in common" what was meant was corresponding to a person having a certain distinguishing mark, we are likely to find another in a group of four chosen at random having the mark in common with him. Similar remarks apply to the later statements of the learned Judge. When he says "There will be 2 persons from out of 46 men who will have all the six marks in common," what was meant was: if we have a person with six marks, we are likely to find another who has all the six marks in common with him, out of a group of 46 persons chosen at random. A similar correction should be applied to the statement "out of 4,096 persons, two persons would possess the marks spoken to by the expert." In each case, the learned Judge adds to the person compared, the one person that may, as a matter of probability, be found in a group and makes it two.

This is not strictly accurate.