The Postmaster Case

In one line

The Postmaster case decided that a man who stands outside the door while his companions kill inside is liable for the killing.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: Barendra Kumar Ghosh v. King Emperor, decided by the Privy Council in 1924 and universally called the Postmaster case, settled that the common intention provision applies to separate acts, similar or diverse, done by several persons in furtherance of a common intention, so that each is liable for the result of them all; that the narrower reading requiring each to do the same act is self-defeating because several persons cannot do the same act; and that participation may consist in standing guard, Lord Sumner adding that in crimes as in other things they also serve who only stand and wait.

Why MU asks for it by name

Because it is the case that makes the doctrine work. Before it, a line of authority held that where two men fired and only one bullet struck, the man who missed had committed only an attempt. That reading would have made the common intention provision useless in exactly the cases it was drafted for.

An examiner who names the case in the question expects three things: the facts, the reasoning, and the sentence.

The facts

On 3 August 1923 the Sub-Postmaster at Sankaritolla Post Office was counting money at his table in the back room. Several men appeared at the door leading in from the courtyard and called on him to give up the money. Almost immediately they fired pistols at him. He was hit in the hand and near the armpit and died almost at once. The assailants fled without taking any money, separating as they ran.

The appellant, though he fired his pistol several times on the prosecution evidence, was pursued by a post office assistant and others and secured just after he threw the pistol away. The pistol was picked up at once and produced at the trial: a German automatic, and an ejected shell found just inside the room fitted it, as did the bullet cut out of the postmaster's back. It was not conclusively proved that no other assailant had a similar pistol or used a similar bullet.

The prosecution evidence was that three men fired, that the appellant was one of them, and that a fourth man was visible from the room standing close to the others but just outside on the doorstep, armed but not firing.

The appellant's own case, made for the first time in his statement after the prosecution closed, was that he was the man outside. He said he stood in the courtyard and was very much frightened; that he heard two sounds, dum dum, was confused, could not remember anything, then heard cries of thief and, not finding the others there, ran away. He also said he had been taken that morning to a house, solicited to join a dacoity, shown how to use a pistol, and had stipulated that he was not to be a party to any dacoity or murder and was told there was to be no murder and that he was to be there merely for show.