Himachal Pradesh HC Acquits Postmaster, Finding Audit Records And Account Books Insufficient To Prove Depositors’ Money Was Entrusted To Him

The petitioner, an Extra Departmental Branch Postmaster, was accused of taking deposits from customers, recording them in passbooks but not crediting them to the Post Office accounts, and of forging signatures to withdraw money.

The Trial Court convicted him under Sections 409 and 420 IPC and imposed three years’ rigorous imprisonment and a fine under each section; the Appellate Court affirmed the convictions.

In revision, the petitioner challenged the sufficiency of the evidence, particularly the absence of depositor testimony establishing entrustment.

Section 409 IPC, read with Section 405 IPC, requires proof of entrustment or dominion over property and dishonest misappropriation, conversion, use, or disposal; entrustment must be established by the prosecution and is not presumed merely from missing account entries (Sadhupati Nageswara Rao v. State of A.P., (2012) 8 SCC 547; N. Raghavender v. State of A.P., (2021) 18 SCC 70).

Under Section 34 of the Evidence Act, entries in books of account may be relevant but are not, by themselves, sufficient to charge a person with liability; independent evidence is required (CBI v. V.C. Shukla, (1998) 3 SCC 410).

Revisional jurisdiction is supervisory, not appellate, and permits interference with concurrent findings where, among other grounds, they are perverse or disclose a miscarriage of justice (Kuntegowda v. Thurubaiah, 2026 SCC OnLine SC 1485).

The Court also relied on authorities treating cheating and criminal breach of trust as distinct offences based respectively on dishonest inducement at the outset and dishonest misappropriation after entrustment.

The prosecution did not call any depositor to prove that money had been delivered to the petitioner.

The audit report and account books, considered with the evidence of the departmental auditor, did not independently establish entrustment or dishonest misappropriation; the Court therefore found that the lower courts had erred in inferring those elements from the records alone.

The Court further considered Sections 409 and 420 IPC to rest on distinct, mutually exclusive factual bases and held that the petitioner could not be charged and convicted of both offences on the case presented.

These deficiencies justified revisional intervention despite the concurrent findings below.

It directed that any fine deposited be refunded subject to the stated appeal-related conditions and required the petitioner to furnish a bond under Section 437-A CrPC.