Supreme Court restores cashier's acquittal in cash misappropriation case, reaffirms burden of proof

The Supreme Court restored the acquittal of a former cashier-cum-counter clerk at the Telephone Department, Aurangabad, who had been convicted by the Bombay High Court under Section 409 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 for criminal breach of trust, after the trial court had earlier acquitted him. The prosecution alleged that between July and October 1993 he failed to credit the Government with over Rs. 4.75 lakh of collected telephone charges. The trial court acquitted him for want of proof of entrustment and dishonest intention; the Bombay High Court reversed that acquittal and sentenced him to a year's imprisonment.

Setting aside the conviction, a Bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar held that the prosecution had failed to prove entrustment of the property or any dishonest intention, both essential ingredients of Section 409. The Court reiterated three cardinal principles of criminal law drawn from its earlier ruling in Rabindra Kumar Dey v. State of Orissa: the prosecution alone bears the burden of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt; the accused is presumed innocent until proved guilty; and this burden never shifts to the accused, who need only raise a probable explanation that casts doubt on the prosecution's case rather than prove his innocence to the same standard. The Court also noted that an appellate court convicting an accused for the first time after reversing an acquittal must hear the accused on sentence before passing it.