Dhavle, J.Bhutnath Khawas, the petitioner, as Forest Officer of the Dhalbhum estate, lodged an information of theft with the police against one Dasarathi Das for outting away a mohul tree from a plot in Mauza Narsinghgarh belonging to the estate.

2. The trying Magistrate held that the case was totally false, malicious and vexatious, and acquitted the accused and ordered the Forest Officer (so I understand) to pay compensation to him. After moving the Sessions Judge in revision unsuccessfully Bhutnath applied to this Court, not so much against the acquittal of Dasarathi Das as for expunging certain observations made by the trying Magistrate in his judgment against Bankim Chandra Chakravarty, the manager of the estate who had been examined as a witness for the prosecution. At the hearing a question arose whether an application of this kind could be entertained at the instance of Bhutnath and upon this Bankim Chandra Chakravarty himself put in an application praying that the observations objected to may be expunged. Sir Sultan Ahmad who appeared for Bhutnath, and afterwards for Bankim Chandra as well, made it quite clear from the very beginning that his grievance was not the acquittal of Dasarathi Das this Court does not as a rule interfere in revision with acquittals but the observations of the Magistrate against Bankim Chandra.

3. The question whether an application of this kind can be entertained at the instance of Bankim Chandra Chakyavarty himself, when the Court is not dealing with the orders passed in the case, does not appear to have been decided in this Court, but has been the subject of some difference of opinion in other High Courts. My attention has been drawn to Criminal Reference No. 45 of 1936 decided by Khaja Mohammad Noor J. on 14th August 1936, as an instance in which this Court ordered certain remarks to be expunged from the judgment of a Magistrate. That, however, was a case of remarks not against a witness but against an Advocate, and the question how far the High Court has power to order such remarks to be expunged was neither raised nor discussed.

4. The only reported decision of this Court that I have come across, which can at all be said to be in point, is Birnarayan Singh v. Emperor AIR 1922 Pat. 97 . The petitioner in that case was a Sub-Inspector of Police charged with extortion, who had been acquitted, but the judgment proceeded, after the acquittal, to make certain observations about the case ending with the words: "Enter true. Sections 385 and 884-114, I.P.C." Jwala Prasad J., found that this was unjustified and held that this Court had jurisdiction to order it to be expunged. "It has been said," said the learned Judge,

that Section 439, Criminal P.C., does not intend to cover a case of this kind, where the order passed is not based upon the evidence but upon an impression, the order being to enter true. When the order is deleted, the reasons in the preceding paragraph must also go. The High Court has also power to deal with a case of this kind under its general superintendence under the Government of India Act. The power of the High Court to delete irrelevant orders of this kind has been upheld in Emperor v. Thomas Pellako 14 Ind.Cas. 643 where the irrelevant remarks and the Judges opinion on certain matters contained in the judgment were ordered to be expunged and deleted on the ground, that they were ill-judged and should not have found a place in a judgment in a criminal trial.

5. It is not very easy to say from this how far the learned Judge really held that Section 439, Criminal P.C., empowers this Court to order observations to be expunged from the judgment of an inferior Court when the operative order of that Court is itself not in question and this Court is not called upon to deal with the merits of the decision itself.

6. This question was considered by Gokul Prasad and Stuart JJ., in Emperor v. Dunn AIR 1922 All. 107 and the conclusion was arrived at that Section 439 does not empower the High Court to amend the judgments of lower Courts by expunging objectionable passages in cases in which the Court has no authority to interfere with the effective orders passed by the lower Courts. The learned Judges observed that:

If it be held that the grievances of persons who are unjustly criticized by Courts of law in circumstances which obviate the effective orders of the Courts coming before superior Courts in appeal or revision are so great as to require a special enactment for their protection, the matter is one for the consideration of the Legislature. But as the law stands we are satisfied that we have no authority.

7. is was in 1922, and in the following year Section 561A was added to the Criminal Procedure Code providing that nothing in the Code shall be deemed to limit or affect the inherent power of the High Court to make such orders as may be necessary to give effect to any order under this Court or to prevent abuse of the process of any Court or otherwise to secure the ends of justice.

8. This new section was relied upon by Sulaiman J., as he then was, in Panchanan Banerji Vs. Upendra Nath Bhattacharji, to order the deletion of certain passages, which were against the character of the complainant, from a judgment of acquittal. It has, however, been very recently pointed outj by Beaumont C.J., in Balappa Tammanna Tammannavar Vs. Dyamappa Bhusappa, , that all that Section 561A does is to preserve the inherent powers of the High Court without conferring any additional power and that no Court can claim inherent power to alter the judgment of another Court. Jwala Prasad J., also referred in Birnarayan singh v. Emperor A.I.R.1922 Pat. 97 to the power of general superintendence given to the High Court under the Government of India Act, but the latest Government of India Act" (26 Geo. v) makes it perfectly clear that the superintendence given to the High Court under Sub-section (1) of Section 221 of the Act is not to be construed, see Sub-section (2), as giving to a High Court any jurisdiction to question any judgment of any inferior Court which is not otherwise subject to appeal or revision.

9. It was also pointed out in the Bombay case how Section 439, Criminal P.C., will not enable the High Court to expunge passages from a judgment which is not under appeal, affirming the view taken in Emperor v. Dunn AIR 1922 All. 107.

10. The order of acquittal in the present case is not under revision (being on the face of it so well-founded on the evidence that no application would have been entertained in revision against it, as was very rightly appreciated by learned Counsel). I can see no reason for differing from the view taken in P.J. Rogers Vs. Shrinivas Gopal Kawale, garding the powers of the Court in this matter. I must accordingly hold that in the circumstances of this case the Court has no jurisdiction to expunge the remarks, of which first his subordinate Bhutnath Khawas and then Bankim Chandra Chakravarty himself have made a grievance.

11. In this view I do not propose to discuss the remarks objected to. It may, however, be useful to draw the attention of the learned Magistrate to the fact that though he was apparently entitled from the evidence before him to infer that Bankim Chandra Chakravarty had not told or admitted all he knew, it was not a happy way of referring to this lack of candour to speak of his "suppressing telling the truth" and later on of his deliberately perjuring himself. The learned Magistrate would do well to refrain from using words with which he is not very familiar, perjury being apparently one of them.

12. The application in revision is dismissed.