अमर शहीद अशफ़ाक़उल्ला ख़ाँ: व्यक्तित्व और कृतित्व (काकोरी के अमर शहीद का जीवन व रचनाएँ)

( 79 )
in the carriage proves nothing unless Abdul Wadud was looking
in at the same time. Abdul Wadud's attention was specially
directed to the men afterwards by Dr. Gupta when the chain was
pulled so that the question whether he observed them very closely
at the Kakori Station is not very important.
(iii) Abdul Wadud identified twelve men altogether, the
two accused in this case, Ram Prasad, Prem Kishan Khanna, M. N.
Gupta and R. K Sinha of 'those accused in the maincase; Damodar
Sarup who has been too ill to stand his trial; one man who was dis- O. P. 123.
10 charged and four men who are not alleged by the prosecution to
have taken part in the dacoity. Four mistakes may suggest that he
is not such a reliable witness as for instance, Dr. Gupta, but the per-
centage is not so large as to make his evidence and his identification
of the present accused altogether untrustworthy. The reason for
his identifying more accused than the other witnesses appears to be
partly that he had a better opportunity of seeing them and partly
that being an uneducated man he is less careful to identify only
those about whom he is certain. According to his evidence seven men
got out of a third class carriage and looked towards the engine. As
20 he was coming towards them he must have had a good opportunity of
seeing most of these. In the identification proceedings Ex. P. A 50
it is noted that Ashfaq ullah stated that he had seen this witness
at the Shahjahanpur railway station and that he had once slapped
him in the face because he had given him too little ice. As, how-
ever, the witness was never questioned about this story and there
is no evidence to support it I cannot attach any credence to it.
(iv) Jagannath Prasad identified, in addition to Ashfaqullah,
Mukandi Lal and two wrong persons. If the number of persons
paraded be taken into account I do not think that two mistakes
30 make his identification of Ashfaqu'lah and Mukandi Lal worthless,
although they do indicate that he is not such a careful witness as
Dr. Gupta, who identified Ashfaqullah and Lahiri and refused to
identify Bakshi although he was clearly doubtful about him.
(v) The witnesses have admitted that there was long grass by O. P. 124.
the side of the line and from this the defence have assumed that
the path by the side of the line, through which the accused and
witnesses walked towards the brake van, ran through this grass.
There does not appear to be any foundation for this suggestion.
I have no doubt that there was plenty of room for the witnesses
40 to walk along side the train without going into the grass.
(vi) Jagannath Prasad says that he was at the Mission
School, Shahjahanpur, and it is proved that Ashfaqullah was also
at this school. Jagannath Prasad, however, says that he does not
know whether Ashfaqullah was there at the same time as himself.
He left in 1916 and did not regularly take part in games (as Ashfaq-
ullah did). If they were at this school together at the same time