text:
Supreme Court Judgments
A.S. (J) Anand, A.S. (J) Ahmad Saghir S. (J) Dr. Anand, J.
appeal under Section 14 of the Terrorist Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act,
1984 is directed against the judgment and order of Additional Judge, Special Court, Ludhiana Dated 1.6.1985 by which the respondents were acquitted of
the charge of abduction and rape. For what follows, the judgment impugned in
this appeal, presents a rather disquietening and a disturbing feature. It
demonstrates lack of sensitivity on the part of the court by casting
unjustified stigmas on a prosecutrix aged below 16 years in a rape case, by overlooking
human psychology and behavioral probabilities. An intrinsically wrong approach
while appreciating the testimonial potency of the evidence of the prosecutrix
has resulted in miscarriage of justice.
a brief reference to the prosecution case:
The prosecutrix
(name withheld by us),a young girl below 16 years of age, was studying in the
10th class at the relevant time in Government High School, Pakhowal. The matriculation
examinations were going on at the material time. The examination centre of the prosecutrix
was located in the Boys High School, Pakhowal. On 30th March, 1984 at about 12.30 p.m. after
taking her test in Geography, the prosecutrix was going to the house of her
maternal uncle, Darshan Singh, and when she had covered a distance of about 100
karmas from the school, a blue ambassador car being driven by a sikh youth aged
20/25 years came from behind. In that car Gurmit Singh, Jagjit Singh @ Bawa and
Ranjit Singh accused were sitting. The car stopped near her. Ranjit Singh
accused came out of the car and caught hold of the prosecutrix from her arm and
pushed her inside the car.
Jagjit Singh @ Bawa put his hand on the mouth of the prosecutrix, while Gurmit
Singh accused threatened the prosecutrix, that in case she raised an alarm she
would be done to death. All the three accused (respondents herein) drove her to
the tubewell of Ranjit Singh accused. She was taken to the `kotha' of the Tubewell.
The driver of the car after leaving the prosecutrix and the three accused
persons there went away with the car. In the said kotha Gurmit Singh compelled
the prosecutrix to take liquor, misrepresenting to her that it was juice. Her
refusal did not have any effect and she reluctantly consumed liquor. Gurmit
Singh then got removed her salwar and also opened her shirt. She was made to
lie on a cot in the kotha while his companions guarded the kotha from outside. Gurmit
Singh committed rape upon her. She raised rule as she was suffering pain but Gurmit
Singh threatened to kill her if she persisted in raising alarm. Due to that
threat, she kept quiet. After Gurmit Singh had committed rape upon her, the
other two accused, who were earlier guarding the kotha from outside, came in
one by one, and committed rape upon her. Jagjit Singh alias bawa committed rape
on her after Gurmit Singh and thereafter Ranjit Singh committed rape on her.
Each one of the accused committed sexual intercourse with the prosecutrix
forcibly and against her will. They all subjected her to sexual intercourse
once again during the night against her will.
morning at about 6.00
a.m., the same car
arrived at the tubewell kotha of Ranjit Singh and the three accused made her to
sit in that car and left her near the Boys
High School, Pakhowal near about the place from
where she had been abducted. The prosecutrix had to take her examination in the
subject of Hygiene on that date. She, after taking her examination in Hygeine,
reached her village Nangal- Kalan, at about noon time and narrated the entire story to her mother, Smt. Gurdev Kaur,
PW7. Her father Trilok Singh PW6 was not present in the house at that time. He
returned from his work late in the evening. The mother of the prosecutrix, Smt.
Gurdev kaur PW7, narrated the episode to her husband Tirlok Singh PW6 on his
arrival. Her father straightaway contacted Sarpanch Joginder Singh of the
village. A panchayat was convened. Matter was brought to the notice of the Sarpanch
of village Pakhowal also. Both the Sarpanches, tried to affect a compromise on
1.4.1984 but since the panchayat could not give any justice of relief to the prosecutrix,
she alongwith her father proceeded to the police station Raikot to lodge a
report about the occurrence with the police. When they reached at the bus adda
of village Pakhowal, the police met them and she made her statement, Ex. PD,
before ASI Raghubir Chand PW who made an endorsement, Ex. PD/1 and sent the
statement Ex. PD of the prosecutrix to the police station Raikot for
registration of the case on the basis of which formal FIR Ex. PD/2 was
registered by SI Malkiat Singh. ASI Raghubir Chand then took the prosecutrix
and her mother to the primary health centre Pakhowal for medical examination of
the prosecutrix. She was medically examined by lady doctor Dr. Sukhwinder Kaur,
PW1 on 2.4.84, who found that the hymen of the prosecutrix was lacerated with
fine rediate tears, swollen and painful. Her pubic hair were also found mated.
According to PW1 intercourse with the prosecutrix could be "one of the
reasons for laceration which I found in her hymen". She went on to say
that the possibility could not be ruled out that the prosecutrix "was not
habitual to intercourse earlier." During the course of investigation, the
police took into possession a sealed percel handed over by the lady doctor
containing the salwar of the prosecutrix alongwith 5 slides of vaginal smears
and one sealed phial containing pubic hair of the prosecutrix, vide memo Ex.
PK. On the pointing out of the prosecutrix, the investigating officer prepared
the rough site plan Ex. PF, of the place from where she had been abducted. The prosecutrix
also led the investigating officer to the tubewell kotha of Ranjit Singh where
she had been wrongfully confined and raped. The investigating officer prepared
a rough site plan of the Kotha Ex. PM. A search was made for the accused on
2.4.1984 but they were not found. They were also not traceable on 3.4.1984, inspite
of a raid being conducted at their houses by the ASI. On 5.4.1984 Jagjit Singh
alias Bawa and Ranjit Singh were produced before the investigating officer by Gurbachan
Singh and Jagjit Singh on the same day were produced before Dr. B.L. Bansal PW3
for medical examination.
doctor opined that both the accused were fit to perform sexual intercourse. Gurmit
Singh respondent was arrested on 9.4.1984 by SI Malkiat Singh. He was also got
medically examined on 9.4.1984 from Dr. B.L. Bansal PW3 who opined that Gurmit
Singh was also fit to perform sexual intercourse. The sealed parcels containing
the slides of vaginal smears, the pubic hair and the salwar of the prosecutrix,
were sent to the chemical examiner. The report of the chemical examiner
revealed that semen was found on the slides of vaginal smear though no spermatozoa
was found either on the pubic hair or the salwar of the prosecutrix.
completion of the investigation, respondents were challaned and were charged
for offences under Sections 363, 366, 368, 376 IPC.
With a
view to connect the respondents with the crime, the prosecution examined Dr. Sukhwinder
Kaur, PW1;
PW2; Dr. B.L. Bansal, PW3; Tirlok Singh, father of the prosecutrix, PW6; Gurdev
Kaur, mother of the prosecutrix, PW7; Gurbachan Singh, PW8; Malkit Singh, PW9
and SI Raghubir hand PW10, besides, some formal witnesses like the draftsman
etc. The prosecution tendered in evidence affidavits of some of the constables,
whose evidence was of a formal nature as also the report of the chemical
examiner, Ex. PM. In their statements recorded under Section 313 Cr. P.C. the
respondents denied the prosecution allegations against them. Jagjit Singh
respondent stated that it was a false case foisted on him on account of his enemity
with the Sarpanch of village Pakhowal. He stated that he had married a Canadian
girl in the village Gurdwara, which was not liked to by the sarpanch and
therefore the sarpanch was hostile to him and had got him falsely implicated in
this case. Gurmit Singh -respondent took the stand that he had been falsely
implicated in the case on account of enemity between his father and Tirlok
Singh, PW6, father of the prosecutrix. He stated that there was long standing
litigation going on between his father and the father of the prosecutrix and
their family members were not even on speaking terms with each other. He went
on to add that on 1.4.1984 he was given beating by Tirlok Singh PW6, on grounds
of suspicion that he might have instigated some persons to abduct his daughter
and in retaliation he and his elder brother on the next day had given beating
to Tirlok Singh, PW6 and also abused him and on that account Tirlok Singh PW,
in consultation with the police had got him falsely implicated in the case.
Singh respondent also alleged false implication but gave no reasons for having
been falsely implicated. Jagjit Singh alias Bawa produced DW-1 Kuldip Singh and
DW-2 MHC, Amarjit Singh in defence and tendered in evidence Ex. DC, a photostat
copy of his passport and Ex. DD copy of a certificate of his marriage with the
Canadian girl. He also tendered into evidence photographs marked `C' and `D',
evidencing his marriage with the Canadian girl. The other two accused however
did not lead any defence evidence.
trial court first dealt with the prosecution case relating to the abduction of
the prosecutrix by the respondents and observed:
first point for appreciation before me would arise whether this part of the
prosecution story stands fortified by any cogent or reliable evidence or not.
is a bald allegation only of (prosecutrix-name omitted) that she was forcibly
abducted in a car. In the F.I.R she stated that she was abducted in an
Ambassador Car of blue colour. After going through the evidence, I am of the
view that this thing has been introduced by the prosecutrix or by their father
or by the thanedar just to give the gravity of offence. (Prosecutrix name
omitted) was tested about the particulars of the car and she is so ignorant
about the make etc. of the car that entire story that she was abducted in the
car becomes doubtful. She stated in her cross- examination at page No.8 that
the make of the car was Master. She was pertinently asked whether the make of
the car was Ambassador of Fiat. The witness replied that she cannot tell the
make of the car. But when she was asked as to the difference between Fiat,
Ambassador or Master car, she was unable to explain the difference amongst
these vehicles. So, it appears that the allegations that she was abducted in a
Fiat Car by all the three accused and the driver, is an imaginary story which
has been given either by the thanedar of by the father of the prosecutrix."
"If the three known accused are in the clutches of the police, it is not
difficult for the I.O. to come to know about the car, the name of its driver
etc., but strange enough, SI Raghubir Chand has shown pitiable negligence when
he could not find out the car driver inspite of the fact that he directed the
investigation on these lines. He had to admit that he made search for taking
the car into possession allegedly used in the occurrence. He could not find out
the name of the driver nor could he find out which car was used. In these
circumstances, it looks to be improbable that any car was also used in the
alleged abduction". (Omission of name of the prosecutris - ours) The trial
court further commented :
30th March, 1984 she was forcibly abducted by four
desperate persons who were out and out to molest her honour.
It has
been admitted by the prosecutrix that she was taken through the bus adda of Pakhowal
via metalled road. It has come in the evidence that it is a busy center. Inspite
of that fact she has not raised any alarm, so as to attract persons that she
was being forcibly taken. The height of her own unnatural conduct is that she
was left by the accused at the same point on the next morning. The accused
would be the last person to extend sympathy to the prosecutrix. Had it been so,
the natural conduct of the prosecutrix was first torush to the house of her
maternal uncle to apprise him that she had been forcibly abducted on the
previous day.
witness after her being left at the place of abduction lightly takes her
examination. She does not complain to the lady teachers who were deployed to
keep a watch on the girl students because these students are to appear in the
center of Boys School. She does not complain to anybody nor her friend that she
was raped during the previous night.
prefers her examination rather than to go to the house of her parents or
relations. Thereafter, she goes to her village Mangal Kalan and informs for the
first time her mother that she was raped on the previous night. This part of
the prosecution story does not look to be probable." The trial court,
thus, disbelieved the version of the prosecutrix basically for the reasons;
"she is so ignorant about the make etc. of the car that entire story that
she was abducted in the car becomes doubtful" particularly because she
could not explain the difference between a Fiat car, Ambassador car or a Master
the investigating officer had "shown pitiable negligence" during the
investigation by not tracing out the car and the driver;
(iii) that
the prosecutrix did not raise any alarm while being abducted even though she
had passed through the bus adda of village Pakhowal
that the story of abduction" has been introduced by the prosecutrix or by
her father or by the thanedar just to give the gravity of offence" and
(v) that
no corroboration of the statement of the prosecutrix was available on the
record and that the story that the accused had left her near the school next
morning was not believable because the accused could have no
"sympathy" for her.
trial court also disbelieved the version of the prosecutrix regarding rape. It
found that the testimony of the prosecutrix did not inspire confidence for the
(i) that
there had been delay in lodging the FIR and as such the chances of false
implication of the accused could not be ruled out. According to the trial court
Trilok Singh PW6 became certain on 1.4.84 that there was no outcome of the
meeting between the panchayats of Nangalkhurd and Pakhowal therefore there was
no justification for him not to have lodged the report on 1.4.84 itself and
since Trilok Singh had " entered into consultations with his wife as to
whether to lodge the report or not, it rendered the matter doubtful."
(ii) that
the medical evidence did not help the prosecution case. The trial court
observed that in her cross-examination PW1 lady doctor had admitted that
whereas inter-course with the prosecutrix could be one of the reasons for the
laceration of the hymen "there could be other reasons also for that
laceration". The trial court noticed that the lady doctor had inserted a
vaginal speculum for taking swabs from the posterior vaginal fornix of the prosecutrix
for preparing slides and since the width of the speculum was about two fingers,
the possibility that the prosecutrix was habituated to sexual inter-course
could not be ruled out". The trial court observed that the prosecutrix was
"flighting her imagination in order to rope in the accused persons"
and that implicit reliance could not be placed on the testimony "of such a
(iii) there
was no independent corroboration of her testimony and
(iv) that
the accused had been implicated on account of enemity as alleged by the accused
in their statements recorded under Section 313 Cr. P.C.
The grounds
on which the trial court disbelieved the version of the prosecutrix are not at
all sound. The findings recorded by the trial court rebel against realism and
lose their sanctity and credibility. The court lost sight of the fact that the prosecutrix
is a village girl.
was a student of Xth Class. It was wholly irrelevant and immaterial whether she
was ignorant of the difference between a Fiat, an Ambassador or a Master car.
Again, the statement of the prosecutrix at the trial that she did not remember
the colour of the car, though she had given the colour of the car in the FIR
was of no material effect on the reliability of her testimony. No fault could
also be found with the prosecution version on the ground that the prosecutrix
had not raised an alarm while being abducted.
The prosecutrix
in her statement categorically asserted that as soon as she was pushed inside
the car5 she was threatened by the accused to keep quiet and not to raise any
alarm otherwise she would be killed. Under these circumstances to discredit the
prosecutrix for not raising an alarm while the car was passing through the Bus Adda
is traverisity of justice. The court over-looked the situation in which a poor
helpless minor girl had found herself in the company of three desperate young
men who were threatening her and preventing her from raising any alram. Again,
if the investigating officer did not conduct the investigation properly or was
negligent in not being able to trace out the driver or the car, how car that
become a ground to discredit the testimony of the prosecutrix? The prosecutrix
had no control over the investigating agency and the negligence of an
investigating officer could not affect the credibility of the statement of the prosecutrix.
Trial Court fell in error for discrediting the testimony of the prosecutrix on
that account. In our opinion, there was no delay in the lodging of the FIR
either and if at all there was some delay, the same has not only been properly
explained by the prosecution but in the facts and circumstances of the case was
also natural. The courts cannot over-look the fact that in sexual offences
delay in the lodging of the FIR can be due to variety of reasons particularly
the reluctance of the prosecutrix or her family members to go to the police and
complain about the incident which concerns the reputation of the prosecutrix
and the honour of her family. It is only after giving it a cool thought that a
complaint of sexual offence is generally lodged. The prosecution has explained
that as soon as Trilok Singh PW6, father of the prosecutrix came to know from
his wife, PW7 about the incident he went to the village sarpanch and complained
to him. The sarpanch of the village also got in touch with the sarpanch of
village Pakhowal, where in the tube well kotha of Ranjit Singh rape was
committed, and an effort was made by the panchayats of the two villages to sit
together and settle the matter. It was only when the Panchayats failed to
provide any relief or render any justice to the prosecutrix, that she and her
family decided to report the matter to the police and before doing that
naturally the father and mother of the prosecutrix discussed whether or not to
lodge a report with the police in view of the repercussions it might have o n
the reputation and future prospects of the marriage etc. of their daughter. Trilok
Singh PW6 truthfully admitted that he entered into consultation with his wife
as to whether to lodge a report or not and the trial court appears to have
misunderstood the reasons and justification for the consultation between Trilok
Singh and his wife when it found that the said circumstance had rendered the
version of the prosecutrix doubtful. Her statement about the manner in which
she was abducted and again left near the school in the early hours of next
morning has a ring of truth. It appears that the trial court searched for
contradictions and variations in the statement of the prosecutrix
microscopically, so as to disbelieve her version. The observations of the trial
court that the story of the prosecutrix that she was left near the examination
center next morning at about 6 a.m. was
"not believable" as `the accused would be the last persons to extend
sympathy to the prosecutrix" are not at all intelligible. The accused were
not showing "any sympathy" to the prosecutrix while driving her at 6.00 a.m. next morning to the place from where she had been
addicted but on the other hand were removing her from the kotha of Ranjit Singh
and leaving her near the examination center so as to avoid being detected. The
criticism by the trial court of the evidence of the prosecutrix as to why she
did not complain to the lady teachers or to other girl students when she
appeared for the examination at the center and waited till she went home and
narrated the occurrence to her mother is unjustified. The conduct of the prosecutrix
in this regard appears to us to be most natural. The trial court over-looked
that a girl, in a tradition bound non-permissive society in India, would be
extremely reluctant even to admit that any incident which is likely to reflect
upon her chastity had occurred, being conscious of the danger of being
ostracized by the society or being looked down by the society. Her not
informing the teachers or her friends at the examination center under the
circumstances cannot detract from her reliability. In the normal course of
human conduct, this unmarried minor girl, would not like to give publicity to
the traumatic experience she had undergone and would feel terribly embarrassed
in relation to the incident to narrate it to her teachers and others
over-powered by a feeling of shame and her natural inclination would be to
avoid talking about it to any one, lest the family name and honour is brought
into controversy.
her informing to her mother only on return to the parental house and no one
else at the examination center prior thereto is an accord with the natural
human conduct of a female. The courts must, while evaluating evidence, remain
alive to the fact that in a case of rape, no self-respecting woman would come
forward in a court just to make a humiliating statement against her honour such
as is involved in the commission of rape on her. In cases involving sexual
molestation, supposed considerations which have no material effect on the
veracity of the prosecution case or even discrepancies in the statement of the prosecutrix
should not, unless the discrepancies are such which are of fatal nature, be
allowed to throw out an otherwise reliable prosecution case. The inherent
bashfulness of the females and the tendency to conceal outrage of sexual
aggression are factors which the Courts should not over-look. The testimony of
the victim in such cases is vital and unless there are compelling reasons which
necessitate looking for corroboration of her statement, the courts should find
no difficulty to act on the testimony of a victim of sexual assault alone to
convict an accused where her testimony inspires confidence and is found to be
reliable. Seeking corroboration of her statement before relying upon the same,
as a rule, in such cases amounts to adding insult to injury.
should the evidence of a girl of a woman who complains of rape or sexual
molestation, be viewed with doubt, disbelief or suspicion? The Court while
appreciating the evidence of a prosecutrix may look for some assurance of her
statement to satisfy its judicial conscience, since she is a witness who is
interested in the outcome of the charge levelled by her, but there is no
requirement of law to insist upon corroboration of her statement to base
conviction of an accused. The evidence of a victim of sexual assault stands
almost at par with the evidence of an injured witness and to an extent is even
more reliable. Just as a witness who has sustained some injury in the occurrence,
which is not found to be self inflicted, is considered to be a good witness in
the sense that he is least likely to shield the real culprit, the evidence of a
victim of a sexual offence is entitled to great weight, absence of
corroboration notwithstanding. Corroborative evidence is not an imperative
component of judicial credence in every case of rape. Corroboration as a
condition for judicial reliance on the testimony of the prosecutrix is not a
requirement of law but a guidance of prudence under given circumstances. It
must not be over-looked that a woman or a girl subjected to sexual assault is
not an accomplice to the crime but is a victim of another persons's lust and it
is improper and undesirable to test her evidence with a certain amount of
suspicion, treating her as if she were an accomplice.
have to be drawn from a given set of facts and circumstances with realistic
diversity and not dead uniformity lest that type of rigidity in the shape of
rule of law is introduced through a new form of testimonial tyranny making
justice a casualty. Courts cannot cling to a fossil formula and insist upon
corroboration even if, taken as a whole, the case spoken of by the victim of
sex crime strikes the judicial mind as probable. In State of 550) Ahmadi, J.
(as the Lord Chief Justice then was) speaking for the Bench summarised the
position in the following words:
prosecutrix of a sex offence cannot be put on par with an accomplice. She is in
fact a victim of the crime. The Evidence Act nowhere says that her evidence
cannot be accepted unless it is corroborated in material particulars.
She is
undoubtedly a competent witness under Section 118 and her evidence must receive
the same weight as is attached to an injured in cases of physical violence. The
same degree of care and caution must attach in the evaluation of her evidence
as in the case of an injured complainant or witness and no more. What is
necessary is that the court must be alive to and conscious of the fact that it
is dealing with the evidence of a person who is interested in the outcome of
the charge levelled by her. If the court keeps this in mind and feels satisfied
that it can act on the evidence of the prosecutrix, there is no rule of law or
practice incorporated in the Evidence Act similar to illustration (b) to
Section 114 which requires it to look for corroboration. If for some reason the
court is hesitant to place implicit reliance on the testimony of the prosecurtix
it may look for evidence which may lend assurance to her testimony short of
corroboration required in the case of an accomplice.
nature of evidence required to lend assurance to the testimony of the prosecutrix
must necessarily depend on the facts and circumstances of each case. But if a prosecutrix
is an adult and of full understanding the court is entitled to base a
conviction of her evidence unless the same is shown to be infirm and not
trustworthy. If the totality of the circumstances appearing on the record of
the case disclose that the prosecutrix does not have a strong motive to falsely
involve the person charged, the court should ordinarily have no hesitation in
accepting her evidence." We are in respectful agreement with the above
exposition of law. In the instant case our careful analysis of the statement of
the prosecutrix has created an impression on our minds that she is a reliable
and truthful witness. Her testimony suffers from no infirmity or blemish
whatsoever. We have no hesitation in acting upon her testimony alone withoutlooking
for any `corroboration'.
in this case there is ample corroboration available on the record to lend
further credence to the testimony of the prosecutrix.
medical evidence has lent full corroboration to the testimony of the prosecutrix.
According to PW1 lady Doctor Sukhvinder Kaur she had examined the prosecutrix
on 2.4.84 at about 7.45 p.m. at the Primary Health Center, Pakhowal, and had
found that "her hymen was lacerated with fine rediate tears, swollen and
painful". The pubic hair were also found mated. She opined that
inter-course with the prosecutrix could be "one of the reason for the
laceration of the hymen" of the prosecutrix. She also opined that the
"possibility cannot be ruled out that (prosecutrix) was not habitual of
inter-course earlier to her examination by her on 2.4.84". During her
cross-examination, the lady doctor admitted that she had not inserted her
fingers inside the vagina of the prosecutrix during the medico-legal
examination but that she had put a vaginal speculum for taking the swabs from
the posterior vaginal fornix for preparing the slides. She disclosed that the
size of the speculum was about two fingers and agreed with the suggestion made
to her during her cross-examination that "if the hymen of a girl admits
two fingers easily, the possibility that such a girl was habitual to sexual
inter- course cannot be ruled out". However, no direct and specific
question was put by the defence to the lady doctor whether the prosecutrix in
the present case could be said to be habituated to sexual intercourse and there
was no challenge to her statement that the prosecutrix `may not have been
subjected to sexual intercourse earlier'. No enquiry was made from the lady
doctor about the tear of the hymen being old. Yet, the trial court interpreted
the statement of PW1 Dr.Sukhwinder Kaur to hold that the prosecutrix was
habituated to sexual inter-course since the speculum could enter her vagina
easily and as such she was "a girl of loose character". There was no
warrant for such a finding and the finding if we may say so with respect, is a
wholly irresponsible finding. In the face of the evidence of PW1, the trial
court wrongly concluded that the medical evidence had not supported the version
of the prosecutrix.
trial court totally ignored the report of the Chemical Examiner Ex. PM,
according to which semen had been found on the slides which had been prepared
by the lady doctor from the vaginal secretions from the posterior of the
vaginal fornix of the prosecutrix. The presence of semen on the slides lent
authentic corroboration to the testimony of the prosecutrix. This vital
evidence was foresaken by the trial court and as a result wholly erroneous
conclusions were arrived at. Thus, even though no corroboration is necessary to
rely upon the testimony of the prosecutrix, yet sufficient corroboration from
the medical evidence and the report of the chemical examiner is available on
the record.
her statement has been fully supported by the evidence of her father, Tirlok
Singh, PW6 and her mother Gurdev Kaur, PW7, to whom she had narrated the
occurrence soon after her arrival at her house. Moreover, the unchallanged fact
that it was the prosecutrix who had led the investigating officer to the Kotha
of the tubewell of Ranjit Singh, where she had been raped, lent a built-in
assurance that the charge levied by her was "genuine" rather than
"fabricated" because it is no one's case that she knew Ranjit Singh
earlier or had ever seen or visited the kotha at his tubewell. The trial court
completely overlooked this aspect. The trial court did not disbelieve that the prosecutrix
had been subjected to sexual intercourse but without any sound basis, observed
that the prosecutrix might have spent the "night" in the company of
some "persons" and concocted the story on being asked by her mother
as to where she had spent the night after her maternal uncle, Darshan Singh,
came to Nangal-Kalan to enquire about the prosecutrix. There is no basis for
the finding that the prosecutrix had spent the night in the company of
"some persons" and had indulged in sexual intercourse with them of her
own free will. The observations were made on surmises and conjectures - the prosecutrix
was condemned unheard.
trial court was of the opinion that it was a `false' case and that the accused
had been implicated on account of enemity. In that connection it observed that
since Trilok Singh PW6 had given beating to Gurmit Singh on 1.4.84 suspecting
his hand in the abduction of his daughter and Gurmit Singh accused and his
elder brother had abused Trilok Singh and given beating to Tirlok Singh PW6 on on
2.4.84, "it was very easy on the part of Trilok Singh to persuade his
daughter to name Gurmit Singh so as to take revenge". The trial court also
found that the relations between the family of Gurmit Singh and of the prosecutrix
were strained on account of civil litigation pending between the parties for
7/8 years prior to the date of occurrence and that was also the `reason' to
falsely implicate Gurmit Singh. Indeed, Gurmit Singh accused in his statement
under Section 313 Cr. P.C. did raise such a plea but that plea has remained
unsubstantiated. Trilok Singh PW6 categorically denied that he had any
litigation with the father of Gurmit Singh at all and went on to say that no
litigation had ever taken place between him and Mukand Singh father of Gurmit singh
over a piece of land or otherwise. To the similar effect is the statement of Gurdev
Kaur PW7 who also categorically stated that there had been no litigation
between her husband and Mukand Singh father of Gurmit Singh.
trial court ignored this evidence and found support for the plea of the accused
from the statement of the prosecutrix in which during the first sentence of her
cross- examination she admitted that litigation was going on between Mukund Singh
father of Gurmit Singh and her father for the last 8/9 years over a piece of
land. In what context the statement was made is not clear. Moreover, the
positive evidence of PW6 and PW7 that there was no litigation pending between
PW6 and PW7 that there was no litigation pending between PW6 and the father of Gurmit
Singh completely belied the plea of the accused. If there was any civil
litigation pending between the parties as alleged by Gurmit Singh he could have
produced some documentary proof in support thereof but none was produced. Even Mukand
Singh, father of Gurmit Singh did not appear in the witness box to support the
plea taken by Gurmit Singh. The allegation regarding any beating given to Gurmit
Singh by PW6 and to PW6 by Gurmit Singh and his brother was denied by PW6 and
no material was brought forth in support of that plea either and yet the trial
court for undisclosed reasons assumed that the story regarding the beating was
correct. Some stray sentences in the statement of the proseuctrix appear to
have been unnecessarily blown out of all proportion to hold that
"admittedly" PW6 had been given given beating by Gurmit Singh accused
and that there was civil litigation pending between the father of the prosecutrix
and the father of Gurmit Singh to show that the relations between the parties
were enemical. There is no acceptable material on the record to hold that there
was any such civil litigation pending between the parties. Even if it be
assumed for the sake of argument that there was some such litigation, it could
hardly be a ground for a father to put forth his daughter to make a wild
allegation of rape against the son of the opposite party, with a view to take
revenge. It defies human probabilities. No father could stoop so low as to
bring forth a false charge of rape on his unmarried minor daughter with a view
to take revenge from the father of an accused on account of pending civil
litigation. Again, if the accused could be falsely involved on account of that enemity,
it was equally possible that the accused could have sexually assaulted the prosecutrix
to take revenge from her father, for after all, enemity is a double edged
weapon, which may be used for false implication as well as to take revenge. In
any case, there is no proof of the existence of such enemity between PW6 and
the father of Gurmit Singh which could have prompted PW6 to put up his daughter
to falsely implicate Gurmit Singh on a charge of rape. The trial court was in
error to hold that Gurmit Singh had been implicated on account of enemity
between the two families and for the beating given by Gurmit Singh and his
brother to PW6, in retaliation of the beating given by PW6 to Gurmit Singh on
1.4.1984. Similarly, so far as Jagjit Singh respondent is concerned, the trial
court opined that he could have been got implicated at the instance of the Sarpanch
of village Pakhowal, who was hostile to Jagjit Singh. The ground of hostility
as given by Jagjit Singh against the Sarpanch of village Pakhowal stems out of
the fact that the sarpanch was annoyed with him for marrying a Canadian girl in
the village Gurdwara. There is no evidence whatsoever on the record to show
that the Sarpanch of village Pakhowal had any relationship of connection with
the prosecutrix or her father or was in any way in a apposition to exhert so
much of incluence on the prosecutrix or her family, that to settle his score Trilok
Singh PW6 would put forward his daughter to make a false allegation of rape and
thereby jeopardise her own honour and future prospects of her marriage etc. The
plea of Jagjit Singh alias Bawa like that of Gurmit Singh did not merit
acceptance and the trial court erroneously accepted the same without any basis.
The Plea of the accused was a plea of despair not worthy of any credence. Ranjit
Singh, apart from stating that he had beenfalsely implicated in the case did
not offer any reasons for his false implication. It was at his tubewell kothe
that rape had been committed on the prosecutrix. She had pointed out that kotha
to the police during investigation. No ostensible rason has been suggested as
to why the prosecutrix would falsely involve Ranjit Singh for the commission of
such a heinous crime and nominate his kotha as the place where she had been
subjected to sexual molestation by the respondents. The trial court ignored
that it is almost inconceivable that an unmarried girl and her parents would go
to the extent of staking their reputation and future in order to falsely set up
a case of rape to settle petty scores as alleged by Jagjit Singh and Gurmit
Singh respondents.
the statement of the prosecutrix, it clearly emerges that she was abducted and
forcibly subjected to sexual intercourse by the three respondents without her
consent and against her will. In this fact situation the question of age of the
prosecutrix would pale into insignificance. However, in the present case, there
is evidence on the record to establish that on the date of the occurrence, the prosecutrix
was below 16 years of age. The prosecutrix herself and her parents deposed at
the trial that her age was less than 16 years on the date of the occurrence.
Their evidence is supported by the birth certificate Ex. PJ. Both Tirlok Singh
PW6 and Gurdev Kaur PW7, the father and mother of the prosecutrix respectively,
explained that initially they had named their daughter, the prosecutrix, as Mahinder
Kaur but her name was changed to .... (name omitted), as according to The holy
Guru Granth Sahib her name was required to start with the word "chhachha"
and therefore in the school leaving certificate her name was correctly given.
There was nothing to disbelieve the explanation given by Trilok Singh and Gurdev
Kaur in that behalf. The trial court ignored the explanation given by the
parents observing that "it could not be swallowed being a belated
one". The trial court was in error. The first occasion for inquiring from Trilok
Singh PW6 about the change of the name of the prosecutrix was only at the trial
when he was asked about Ex. PJ and there had been no earlier occasion for him
to have made any such statement. It was, therefore, not a belated explanation.
apart, even according to the lady doctor PW1, the clinical examination of the prosecutrix
established that she was less than 16 years of age on the date of the
birth certificate Ex. PJ was not only supported by the oral testimony of Trilok
Singh PW6 and Gurdev Kaur PW7 but also by that of the school leaving
certificate mark `B'.
With a
view to do complete justice, the trial court could have summoned the concerned
official from the school to prove various entries in the school leaving
the material on the record, we have come to an unhesitating conclusion that the
prosecutrix was less than 16 years of age when she was made a victim of the
lust of the respondents in the manner deposed to by her against her will and
without her consent. The trial court did not return any positive finding as to
whether or not the prosecutrix was below 16 years of age on 30th March 1984 and
instead went on to observe that `even assuming for the sake of argument that
the prosecutrix was less than 16 years of age on 30th March 1984, it could
still not help the case as she was not a reliable witness and was attempting to
shield her own conduct by indulging in falsehood to implicate the respondents'.
The entire approach of the trial court in appreciating the prosecution evidence
and drawing inferences therefrom was erroneous.
trial court not only erroneously disbelieved the prosecutrix, but quite
uncharitably and unjustifiably even characterised her as a girl "of loose
morals" or "such type of a girl".
has shocked our judicial conscience all the more is the inference drawn by the
court, based on no evidence and not even on a denied suggestion, to the effect:
more probability is that (prosecutrix) was a girl of loose character. She
wanted to dupe her parents that she resided for one night at the house of her
maternal uncle, but for the reasons best known to her she does not do so and
she preferred to give company to some persons." We must express our strong
disapproval of the approach of the trial court and its casting a stigma on the
character of the prosecutrix. The observations lack sobriety expected of a
Judge. Such like stigmas have the potential of not only discouraging an even
otherwise reductant victim of sexual assault to bring forth complaint for trial
of criminals, thereby making the society to suffer by letting the criminal
escape even a trial. The courts are expected to use self- restraint while
recording such findings which have larger repercussions so far as the future of
the victim of the sex crime is concerned and even wider implications on the
society as a whole-where the victim of crime is discouraged - the criminal
encouraged and in turn crime gets rewarded! Even in cases, unlike the present
case, where there is some acceptable material on the record to show that the
victim was habituated to sexual intercourse, no such inference like the victim
being a girl of "loose moral character" is permissible to be drawn
from that circumstance alone. Even if the prosecutrix, in a given case, has
been promiscuous in her sexual behavior earlier, she has a right to refuse to
submit herself to sexual intercourse to anyone and everyone because she is not
a vulnerable object or prey for being sexually assaulted by anyone had
everyone. No stigma, like the one as cast in the present case should be cast
against such a witness by the Courts, for after all it is the accused and not
the victim of sex crime who is on trial in the Court.
As a
result of the aforesaid discussion, we find that the prosecutrix has made a
truthful statement and the prosecution has established the case against the
respondents beyond every reasonable doubt. The trial court fell in error in
acquitting them of the charges levelled against them. The appreciation of
evidence by the trial court is not only unreasonable but perverse. The
conclusions arrived at by the trial court are untenable and in the established
facts and circumstances of the case, the view expressed by it is not a possible
view. We, accordingly, set aside the judgment of the trial court and convict
all the three respondents for offences under Sections 363/366/368 and 376 IPC.
So far as the sentence is concerned, the court has to strike a just balance. In
this case the occurrence took place on 30.3.1984 (more than 11 years ago). The
respondents were aged between 21-24 years of age at the time when the offence
was committed. We are informed that the respondents have not been involved in
any other offence after they were acquitted by the trial court on 1.6.85, more
than a decade ago. All the respondents as well as the prosecutrix must have by
now got married and settled down in life. These are some of the factors which
we need to take into consideration while imposing an appropriate sentence on
the respondents. We accordingly sentence the respondents for the offence under
Section 376 IPC to undergo five years R.I. each and to pay a fine of Rs. 5000/-
each and in default of payment of fine to 1 year's R.I. each. For the offence
under Section 363 IPC we sentence them to undergo three years R.I. each but
impose no separate sentence for the offence under Section 366/368 IPC.
substantive sentences of imprisonment shall, however, run concurrently.
of India, (1995 (1) SCC 14), had suggested, on the formulation of a scheme,
that at the time of conviction of a person found guilty of having committed the
offence of rape, the Court shall award compensation.
this case, we have, while convicting the respondents, imposed, for reasons
already set out above, the sentence of 5 years R.I. with fine of Rs.5000/- and
in default of payment of fine further R.I. for one year on each of the
respondents for the offence under Section 376 IPC.
we do not, in the instant case, for those very reasons, consider it desirable
to award any compensation, in addition to the fine already imposed,
particularly as no scheme also appears to have been drawn up as yet.
parting with the case, there is one other aspect to which we would like to
advert to.
late, crime against women in general and rape in particular is on the increase.
It is an irony that while we are celebrating women's rights in all spheres, we
show little or no concern for her honour. It is a sad reflection on the
attitude of indifference of the society towards the violation of human dignity
of the victims of sex crimes. We must remember that a rapist not only violates
the victim's privacy and personal integrity, but inevitably causes serious psychological
as well as physical harm in the process. Rape is not merely a physical assault
- it is often destructive of the whole personality of the victim. A murderer
destroys the physical body of his victim, a rapist degrades the very soul of
the helpless female. The Courts, therefore, shoulder a great responsibility
while trying an accused on charges of rape. They must deal with such cases with
utmost sensitivity. The Courts should examine the broader probabilities of a
case and not get swayed by minor contradictions or insignificant discrepancies
in the statement of the prosecutrix, which are not of a fatal nature, to throw
out an otherwise reliable prosecution case.
evidence of the prosecutrix inspirers confidence, it must be relied upon
without seeking corroboration of her statement in material particulars. If for
some reason the Court finds it difficult to place implicit reliance on her
testimony, it may look for evidence which may lend assurance to her testimony,
short of corroboration required in the case of an accomplice. The testimony of
the prosecutrix must be appreciated in the background of the entire case and
the trial court must be alive to its responsibility and be sensitive while
dealing with cases involving sexual molestations.
has been lately, lot of criticism of the treatment of the victims of sexual
assault in the court during their cross-examination. The provisions of Evidence
Act regarding relevancy of facts notwithstanding, some defence counsel adopt
the strategy of continual questioning of the prosecutrix as to the details of
the rape. The victim is required to repeat again and again the details of the
rape incident not so much as to bring out the facts on record or to test her
credibility but to test her story for inconsistencies with a view to attempt to
twist the interpretation of events given by her so as to make them appear
inconsistent with her allegations. The Court, therefore, should not sit as a
silent spectator while the victim of crime i being cross-examined by the defence.
It must effectively control the recording of evidence in the Court. While every
latitude should be given to the accused to test the veracity of the prosecutrix
and the credibility of her version through cross-examination, the court must
also ensure that cross-examination is not made a means of harassment or causing
humiliation to the victim of crime. A victim of rape, it must be remembered,
has already undergone a traumatic experience and if she is made to repeat again
and again, in unfamiliar surroundings, what she had been subjected to, she may
be too ashamed and even nervous or confused to speak and her silence or a
confused stray sentence may be wrongly interpreted as "discrepancies and
contradictions" in her evidence.
alarming frequency of crime against women led the Parliament to enact Criminal
Law (Amendment) Act, 1983 [Act 43 of 1983] to make the law of rape more
realistic. By the Amendment Act, Sections 375 and 376 were amended and certain
more penal provisions were incorporated for punishing such custodians who
molest a women under their custody or care.
114-A was also added in the Evidence Act for drawing a conclusive presumption
as to the absence of consent in certain prosecutions for rape, involving such
327 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which deals with the right of an accused
to an open trial was also amended by addition of sub-sections 2 and 3 after re-
numbering the old Section as sub-section (1). Sub-sections 2 and 3 of Section
327 Cr. P.C. provide as follows :
327. Court to be open - (2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section
(1), the inquiry into and trial of rape or an offence under Section 376,
Section 376-A, Section 376- B, Section 376-C or Section 376-D of the Indian
Penal Code shall be conducted in camera :
that the presiding judge may, if he thinks fit, or on an application made by
either of the parties, allow any particular person to have access to, or be or
remain in, the room or buildingused by the Court.
Where any proceedings are held under sub-section (2), it shall not be lawful
for any person to print or publish any matter in relation to any such
proceedings, except with the previous permission of the Court." These two
provisions are in the nature of exception to the general rule of an open trial.
Inspite of the amendment, however, it is seen that the trial courts either are
not conscious of the amendment or do not realise its importance for hardly does
one come across a case where the enquiry and trial of a rape case has been
conducted by the court in camera. The expression that the inquiry into and
trial of rape "shall be conducted in camera" as occurring in sub-
section (2) of Section 327 Cr. P.C. is not only significant but very important.
It casts a duty on the Court to conduct the trial of rape cases etc. invariably
"in camera". The Courts are obliged to act in furtherance of the
intention expressed by the Legislature and not to ignore its mandate and must
invariably take recourse to the provisions of Section 327 (2) and (3) Cr. P.C.
and hold the trial of rape cases in camera. It would enable the victim of crime
to be a little comfortable and answer the questions with greater ease in not
too familiar a surroundings. Trial in camera would not only be in keeping with
the self-respect of the victim of crime and in tune with the legislative intent
but is also likely to improve the quality of the evidence of a prosecutrix
because she would not be so hesitant or bashful to depose frankly as she may be
in an open court, under the gaze of public. The improved quality of her
evidence would assist the courts in arriving at the truth and sifting truth
from falsehood. The High Courts would therefore be well advised to draw the
attention of the trial courts to the amended provisions of Section 327 Cr. P.C.
When trials are held in camera, it would not be lawful for any person to print
or publish any matter in relation to the proceedings in the case, except with
the previous permission of the Court as envisaged by Section 327 (3) Cr. P.C.
This would save any further embarrassment being caused to the victim of sex
crime. Wherever possible it may also be worth considering whether it would not
be more desirable that the cases of sexual assaults on the females are tried by
lady Judges, wherever available, so that the prosecutrix can make her statement
with greater ease and assist the Courts to properly discharge their duties,
without allowing the truth to be sacrificed at the altar of rigid
technicalities while appreciating evidence in such cases. The Courts should, as
far as possible, avoid disclosing the name of the prosecutrix in their orders
to save further embarrassment to the victim of sex crime. The anonymity of the
victim of the crime must be maintained as far as possible throughout. In the
present case, the trial court has repeatedly used the name of the victim in its
order under appeal, when it could have just referred to her as the prosecutrix.
We need say no more on this aspect and hope that the trial Courts would take recourse
to the provisions of Sections 327 (2) and (3) Cr. P.C. liberally. Trial of rape
cases in camera should be the rule and an open trial in such cases an
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
The BEST episodes of Hatfields & McCoys
Every episode of Hatfields & McCoys ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Hatfields & McCoys!
A clash of clans that evoked great passion, vengeance, courage, sacrifice, crimes and accusations, which changed the families and the history of the region forever. The Hatfield-McCoy saga begins with 'Devil' Anse Hatfield and Randall McCoy. Close friends and comrades until near the end of the Civil War, they return to their neighboring homes - Hatfield in West Virginia, McCoy just across the Tug River border in Kentucky - to increasing tensions, misunderstandings and resentments that soon explode into all-out warfare between the families. As hostilities grow, friends, neighbors and outside forces join the fight, bringing the two states to the brink of another Civil War.
#1 - Part 3
Season 1 - Episode 3 - Aired 5/30/2012
Bad Frank's raids force the besieged Hatfields deeper into the mountains; the impulsive Johnse sets his sights on another McCoy woman; the ruthless Nancy McCoy spies on the Hatfields; and the feud leads to a shattering New Year's Day battle.
#2 - Part 2
Season 1 - Episode 2 - Aired 5/29/2012
When the McCoys murder Anse's younger brother, the Hatfields ride out to get bloody revenge. Soon, friends, neighbors, and outside forces join the feud, and all-out hostilities between the Hatfields and McCoys bring West Virginia and Kentucky to the brink of Civil War.
#3 - Part 1
Season 1 - Episode 1 - Aired 5/28/2012
Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton star in this all-new miniseries about the legendary and deadly family feud that broke out in the backwoods of West Virginia and Kentucky after the Civil War. The clash of clans begins when a Hatfield murders a McCoy, and Randall McCoy's daughter and Devil Anse Hatfield's son begin a tempestuous, forbidden love affair.


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Steve Ditko, the comics artist whose vision brought Spider-Man and Doctor Strange to life, passed away at his New York City home on June 29th, 2018. Stan Lee, in his credits for The Amazing Spider-Man, called the artist "Swingin' Steve Ditko" (issue #10) and later "Scowlin' Steve Ditko" (issue #27), but if you had to choose one adjective to attach to Ditko's name, it might be "Uncompromising."
Consider these facts:
- At a time when Marvel cultivated a house look based on Jack Kirby's muscular explosiveness, Ditko stuck to his own style — all rubbery sinews and urban shadows. In an extreme version of the famous Marvel Method, Ditko said he told the stories visually, often with little or no input, inventing villains and situations, which Lee retroactively scripted. When communications broke down between the artist and writer, Ditko simply walked away without explanation.
- Ditko's independent Mr. A comics for Wally Wood's witzend magazine in the late 1960s expressed his objectivist philosophies in bluntly abstract scenarios, even though they had little appeal for most young comics readers and were out of sync with countercultural ideologies of the time. He continued to draw Mr. A for more than 50 years.
- When Renegade Press publisher Deni Loubert accepted an Inkpot Award on Ditko's behalf at the 1987 San Diego Comic-Con, Ditko was reportedly outraged and insisted that she return it.
- Plans for a late 1990s comics series to be written and drawn by Ditko and published by Fantagraphics were scuttled after the first issue when Ditko took offense at a coloring mistake on the cover. Offers to make amends by printing the art with the correct coloring in a later issue were rejected by Ditko, who refused to do any further issues.
- In 2007, a BBC documentary, In Search of Steve Ditko, tracked Ditko down to his New York office but could not coax him to appear on camera or be interviewed. Although Spider-Man co-creator Lee made a career of being in the public eye, Ditko gave no interviews after 1968, turning down even a request from his hero, Will Eisner.
- He declined to cooperate with Blake Bell's 2008 Ditko biography Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, calling the book, sight unseen, a "poison sandwich," and turned the biographer away from his door, as he had many journalists over the years.
- When prominent novelist Jonathan Lethem asked to include a Ditko story in the 2015 volume of The Best American Comics, Ditko turned him down.
- Despite living a Spartan existence eking out a meager living his final years, he refused to sell his original art, which would have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Small-press publisher Greg Theakston told of finding the artist using original Ditko art from 1958 as a cutting board.
To describe Ditko as uncompromising is not to deny his willingness to hire himself out as an artist to just about any publisher who was prepared to sign a paycheck. As a result, whereas Lee worked for one employer his whole life, Ditko turned up all over the comics-industry map, nomadically drifting between comics publishers large and small. But when Ditko inked his own pencils, whether he was working on a co-created character like Doctor Strange as part of the Marvel bullpen or turning in a fill-in, for-hire job like a Get Smart story for Dell or a romance tale for Daring Love, the quality rarely varied. Ditko's influences can be traced to artists like Mort Meskin and Joe Kubert, but his pacing, his compositions, his expressive faces, his choreographed character movements, his organic environments, even the way clothing draped his figures, were instantly recognizable as uniquely Ditko.
For Ditko, his art was all his public needed to know of him. Just before he stopped giving interviews, he told Mike Howell's Marvel Main fanzine, "When I do a job, it's not my personality that I'm offering the readers, but my artwork. It's not what I'm like that counts [but] what I did and how well it was done." Even his most personal comics — his Ayn Rand-themed Mr. A stories — were less a conversation with the reader than an expression of his philosophical values through his art. Ditko the Artist and Ditko the Objectivist were always there for examination. But Ditko the Person remained an enigma — a recurring theme in his character designs (see The Question, The Missing Man, the shadow-shrouded Mocker, the faceless Mr. A).
Ditko, the flesh-and-blood person, was born Nov. 2, 1927, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. His father, Stephen, worked as a master carpenter in a steel mill and his mother, Ann, was a homemaker and seamstress. Young Steve was an only child for his first seven years, but was eventually joined by two brothers and two sisters. In high school, he was a member of the science club and a club devoted to carving model planes to aid in the training of enemy-plane spotters. Upon graduating in 1945, he did a stint in the Army, during which he was stationed in postwar Germany, drawing cartoons for the military newspaper. During this time, he produced a monthly comic book and mailed it to an audience of one: his brother Pat.
After returning to civilian life, Ditko enrolled in New York's Cartoonists and Illustrators School (today known as the School of Visual Arts), where he studied under Batman artist Jerry Robinson. One of his classmates was future bondage cartoonist and photographer Eric Stanton, with whom Ditko would share a studio from 1958 to 1968.
In 1953, Key Publications hired Ditko to draw a Bruce Hamilton story called "Stretching Things." It was his first professional comics work, though it was resold by Key to Ajax-Farrell, which published it in Fantastic Fears #5 only after a second story for Key, "Paper Romance!," had seen print in Daring Love #1 (published by Key imprint Gilmore Publications).
With his foot in the door of the comics industry, he was employed the same year by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon's studio. There he worked alongside Mort Meskin (Sheena, Johnny Quick) drawing a story for Black Magic and doing backgrounds for Captain 3-D. The 3-D gimmick failed to catch on, and Ditko was let go after only three months.
He immediately found work at Charlton Comics, beginning a relationship that would continue off and on until Charlton finally shut down three decades later. Charlton was a prolific, though notoriously cheap, bottom-of-the-barrel comics publisher, but Ditko was able to crank out pages largely free from editorial direction. In less than a year, Ditko drew 170 pages and 19 covers for Charlton, with a concentration on pre-Comics Code horror comics. He accomplished this in spite of suffering from the onset of tuberculosis, which brought his work to a halt in 1954.
Under the care of his mother, Ditko recovered by the following year, but while he was recuperating, Charlton was knocked out of operation by a hurricane. In 1956, unable to return to Charlton, he signed on at Marvel, then called Atlas Comics, where he drew stories for titles such as Journey into Mystery, Spellbound, and World of Suspense. For the next several years, Ditko would oscillate between Marvel/Atlas and Charlton, the two publishers for which he did the bulk of his most significant work.
When Marvel downsized in 1957, he went back to Charlton, which had recovered from its hurricane damage. But a year later, he accepted Stan Lee's invitation to draw for Marvel again. This game of musical chairs allowed Ditko to be in on the creation, with Joe Gill, of the long-running Captain Atom character for Charlton (first appearance: 1960) and put him in the right place at the right time when Lee and Marvel publisher Martin Goodman decided to experiment with its Amazing Fantasy anthology title in 1962 by adding a superhero character.
The first 38 issues of The Amazing Spider-Man proved to be Ditko's most enduring success. Even today, Spider-Man movies and comics are still trying to find their way back to the combination of elements that Ditko instilled in the series: the youthful exhilaration and aerial ballet of Peter Parker giving vent to his web-swinging powers, the down-to-earth subjective point of view of a troubled adolescent, the smoothly paced storytelling. How much of the character can be attributed to Ditko and how much to Lee has been the subject of endless debate. Even Jack Kirby had a claim, having drawn the first cover and an earlier unused Spider-Man character design and partial story at Lee's direction. But it was undeniably Ditko who established the look and feel of the series as it was published. The Marvel Method gave him considerable leeway to develop characters and storylines, and this was especially true as Lee gradually abandoned his pre-penciling story conferences with Ditko.
When Lee later referred to himself in interviews as Spider-Man's creator, Ditko objected. In Sean Howe's Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, Lee recounted a conversation in which Ditko told him, "Having an idea is nothing, because until it becomes a physical thing, it's just an idea.'" Lee responded by arguing that "the person who has the idea is the person who creates it." Unless you believe that what made the first Spider-Man comics great was that they were about a kid who gets bitten by a radioactive spider and gains arachnid powers, then Ditko's point seems valid. We readers didn't fall in love with a synopsis; we were captivated by the way Lee and Ditko brought the idea to life.
Ditko's work on Spider-Man with Lee was less a collaboration than a dialectical collision. According to Marvel writer/editor Roy Thomas, Lee and Ditko disagreed on just about everything, from aesthetics to politics. But it was a collision that made possible a uniquely affecting comic book. Lee conceived the teenage, high-school milieu but Ditko protected that world from Lee's more fanciful, cosmic ideas, arguing that Spidey's villains should be rooted in the streets of New York. The Amazing Spider-Man combined Ditko's story pacing, character design and wiry movements with Lee's self-aware dialogue, Ditko's interiorized existential dilemmas with Lee's trademark tension between the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Years later, in 1999, Lee issued an open letter to the press stating: "I have always considered Steve Ditko to be Spider-Man's co-creator. … I write this to ensure that Steve Ditko receives the credit to which he is most justly entitled." Ditko, in a 2002 essay printed in his Avenging World collection, dismissed the gesture, drawing a distinction between considering Ditko to be Spider-Man's co-creator and avowing that Ditko is Spider-Man's co-creator. On the face of it, Ditko's position seems to be absurdly contrarian. But maybe Ditko understood that Lee made the statement not so much because he believed Ditko was co-creator, but because, as he said in Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, "Steve definitely felt that he was the co-creator of Spider-Man. … So I said fine, I'll tell everybody you're the co-creator."
When it came to Doctor Strange, however, Lee attributed even the "idea" to Ditko. "'Twas Steve's idea," he wrote in a letter to The Comic Reader #16 in 1963. Strikingly different from other Marvel series of the time, the world of Doctor Strange is as far removed as possible from Peter Parker's high-school life — and it is just as singular a vision. The sheer alien-ness of Ditko's writhing inter-dimensional pathways, swirling ectoplasm and spells conjured as fizzing, flashing, arcing light shows threatens to disintegrate into unbounded abstraction, but the figure of Strange guides us through it all and Ditko's sensitivity to the interaction of story and perspective maintains coherence. Strange is as straight-faced a hero as they come, but even in this title, Lee's goofy necromantic wordplay (the Eye of Agamotto, the Seven Bands of Cyttorak) keep things from becoming too dour. It was easily the trippiest of Marvel's titles and was affectionately embraced by the mind-exploring counterculture. Strange showed up on an early Pink Floyd album cover and was referenced in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test as Merry Prankster Ken Kesey's favored reading material. An early concert series organized by the Jefferson Airplane was called A Tribute to Dr. Strange. Four years before the Beatles had their minds blown by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in 1968, Dr. Strange found his way to enlightenment and mystical powers after he journeyed to Tibet and studied at the feet of the Ancient One.
Although he was mistakenly identified by some readers as a fellow head, Ditko, ironically, had no use for the hippy movement or any other collective movement. He had by that time come under the influence of Ayn Rand's writings and her conservative philosophical perspective had begun to creep into his work. For Rand, every individual must fight his or her own battles and should not become involved in collectively conceived actions. The cartoonish depiction of campus protesters in Ditko's Spider-Man, therefore, presumes them to be motivated entirely by confusion and vanity rather than by political awareness.
The Incredible Hulk, which featured a star who could be seen as the ideal Rand-ian self-motivated, outsider figure made its second debut as one half of Tales to Astonish in 1964. Ditko had taken the series over from Kirby with The Incredible Hulk #6 just before its first run was aborted. Like Doctor Strange and The Human Torch in Strange Tales, the revived Incredible Hulk shared Tales to Astonish with another series (Giant-Man), which meant that Lee and Ditko, who had previously focused on short stories for anthology titles, had to adjust to telling episodic tales that continued from one cliffhanger to another. In that, they succeeded, whipping both Incredible Hulk and Doctor Strange into a compelling soap-opera momentum.
For fans, these were the golden years of Ditko's career. They lasted until 1966, the year of Spider-Man #38, Ditko's final Spider-Man issue before he left Marvel. He has steadfastly declined to reveal the reason for his departure, but there are theories galore in the comics community. Some say Ditko's new objectivist philosophy clashed one too many times with the parameters of the Marvel universe. Certainly, Lee and Ditko had ceased to work together. Ditko constructed his stories visually and Lee interpreted them verbally, with neither creator consulting the other. The conflicts reportedly stemmed from Ditko's relationship with Goodman, who Ditko felt, owed him merchandising royalties. The problems between Lee and Ditko might be attributable to the fact that each served a different master, Lee obliged to carry out Goodman's directives and Ditko loyal to Rand and her view of the world.
During Ditko's time at Marvel, he often provided inking for studio mate Eric Stanton's bondage-themed, under-the-counter comics (Sweeter Gwen, Confidential TV). Stanton told Eric Kroll (in The Art of Eric Stanton) that he would also occasionally assist on Ditko's Spider-Man work, but denied having any significant impact on the Marvel character. For his part, Ditko never acknowledged doing any work on Stanton's comics. When asked about Stanton by Loubert and others, Ditko would shut the conversation down. Why did Ditko, the self-made objectivist, who was so immune to the mores of the masses, balk at owning up to his contributions to a few kinky comics pages? It's a question that touches on what may be the biggest absence in public accounts of his life. There is no indication that Ditko was ever intimately involved with another human being. No marriages. No romantic flings. (A report by Will Eisner that he had met Ditko's "son," was never corroborated and Eisner is generally presumed to have mistaken Ditko's nephew for a son.) His compulsion to sweep his sexually themed work with Stanton under the rug may suggest a reticence about such matters. Or it may just stem from the severely honor-bound Ditko's determination to be discreet about his ghost work for another artist. There was, after all, very little that Ditko wasn't happy to sweep under the rug.
Ditko and Stanton ceased to share working space after Stanton married in 1968. By that time Ditko had left Marvel, returned to Charlton and, thanks to former EC artist Wally Wood, begun doing work for three other publishers: Tower, Warren and Wood's own witzend zine. At Charlton, in 1966, he reunited with his Captain Atom character and revived, as a Captain Atom back-up feature, Golden Age superhero Blue Beetle, which Charlton had acquired from Fox. Blue Beetle got his own title in 1967 and, as a back-up feature to that comic, Ditko introduced a new character of his own called The Question. The Question was straight out of the Ayn Rand playbook: an individualist with unerring instincts who publically exposed corruption in his daytime identity as a crusading journalist, while anonymously punishing bad guys as a faceless vigilante. The Question made use of the police and was aided by a scientist companion named Aristotle, but essentially, he acted as a lone judge, jury and, sometimes, executioner, imposing his perfect sense of justice on the world. Charlton, however, was beginning a permanent financial decline, and The Question was soon taken out of his creator's hands, popping up in the 1980s at DC, the new owner of Charlton's properties. (The revived series was drawn by Denys Cowan and written by Denny O'Neil, who toned down the violent vigilantism and gave the protagonist more of a Buddhist point of view.)
But the purest expression of Ditko's philosophical views as filtered through the superhero genre was Mr. A, a self-created, self-owned series first appearing in Wood's witzend #3 in 1967. Unbound by the Comics Code, Mr. A meted out vigilante justice that was even more bluntly unforgiving than that of The Question. Mr. A, like The Question, confronted crime as both a journalist and as a masked champion of justice. In Mr. A's black-and-white world, there was right and wrong and nothing in between. Wearing an emotionless steel face-plate, the implacable avenger ensured that those who were guilty of ethical compromise would pay for their crimes. Along the way, he delivered ideological monologues on how not to stray from the right path.
As editor of the newly formed Tower Comics, Wood also hired Ditko to draw stories for the line's shared universe of titles spun off from T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, which combined superheroes and international super-spy organizations. Though remembered fondly by some, Tower failed to catch on with a broad audience and folded within a couple of years. During the same period, through Wood's connections, Ditko received assignments for Warren's horror magazines Creepy and Eerie. From "Room with a View!" in Eerie #3, cover-dated May 1966, to "The Sands That Change!" in Creepy #16, cover-dated August 1967, Ditko turned out regular stories for Warren, often working with writer Archie Goodwin. Continuing to expand on his style, Ditko experimented with washes and charcoal effects in these black-and-white works. Goodwin left Warren in 1967, as the company was going through a difficult financial period, and Ditko shifted all his energies to Charlton, which was itself holding on by a thread.
Ditko finally came to the other big superhero publisher in 1968, creating the eccentric Creeper for a DC Showcase tryout. The Showcase run was followed by a series (written by Denny O'Neil) that lasted six issues. As with The Question and Mr. A, The Creeper's civilian identity was a media figure, but unlike virtually every other Ditko character, The Creeper's powers also rendered him irrational and psychotically unpredictable. Working with writer Steve Skeates, Ditko's second 1968 Showcase creation for DC was equally unconventional, introducing a pair of super-heroic brothers known as Hawk and Dove. The series' clever concept was to have the duo's teamwork emerge from the dialectics of their opposing psychologies: One brother was a pacifist and the other was bluntly forceful. Because their divergent approaches reflected the nation's ideological split over the Vietnam war, it was naturally a difficult narrative tightrope to walk, especially given Ditko's own distinct leanings. Both O'Neil and Skeates clashed philosophically with Ditko's interpretations. Ditko characters' allegiance to a belief system that starkly divided the world into good and evil led them to casually cause or allow the deaths of anyone they considered to be on the wrong side of the ethical border. By contrast, when a villain would meet a violent end, O'Neil would insert a degree of empathy and regret into the story. When Skeates would have Dove commit an act of bravery, Ditko would object that such acts went against the conceptual integrity of the character. Nevertheless, the artist tolerated these changes with what O'Neil described as thorough professionalism. When Ditko left Hawk and Dove after only two issues, it was because the tuberculosis he had kicked in 1954 had come back.
Ditko's health returned, but his career was at a low ebb, surviving on his fallback Charlton assignments as the 1970s began — though his work was continually being rediscovered in reprint. In 1975, Ditko penciled, Wood inked and future DC President Paul Levitz wrote Stalker, a short-lived sword-and-sorcery series for DC. Because he had walked away from his seminal Marvel work and because the other longstanding characters that he was associated with were part of the floundering Charlton line, Ditko was generally given assignments on start-up series, which rarely lasted. His style was so distinct that for him to take over a Batman or Superman series would have been jarring for longtime fans.
Whatever differences Ditko may have had with Martin Goodman and/or Stan Lee, he was willing to work on the Destructor start-up series edited by Lee's brother Larry Lieber for Atlas/Seaboard, Goodman's imitation-Marvel line. Ditko created the series with Archie Goodwin in 1975, and Wood again supplied the inking, but the title lasted only four issues, the Atlas line itself expiring within the year.
Working for DC from 1977 to 1979, Ditko created Shade the Changing Man, another start-up, and both wrote and drew an eight-page back-up feature in World's Finest that revived the Creeper. Though scripted by Michael Fleisher, Shade, an alien hero with a protective vest that distorted his appearance in response to the mental states of those around him, was fundamentally the product of Ditko's imagination. The artist had long-term plans for the character, plotting the stories 17 issues ahead, and the title found an appreciative audience in the burgeoning comic-shop market among fans looking for something different. Unfortunately, Ditko fell prey to the 1978 DC implosion, in which the publisher ended a period of expansion by canceling most of its recently launched titles, including Shade with issue #8. The Creeper back-up series ended a few months later, at the beginning of 1979.
Ditko made a return to Marvel in 1979 to relaunch Jack Kirby's Machine Man with writer Marv Wolfman. He continued to work on Marvel titles through the 1980s and, perhaps because of the didacticism that had become entrenched in his characterizations, Marvel editors apparently felt he was best suited to work on mechanized and other nonhuman heroes — a far cry from the high-school-rooted Peter Parker. His assignments after his return to Marvel included toy-based series like Rom the Space Knight, a Transformers coloring book, a couple of fill-in Micronauts stories and the Micronauts spin-off Captain Universe. Ditko had often supplied much of the detail in his art at the inking stage and that was even more true of his later mainstream work. Ditko inked his own work on Machine Man, but after that, he settled into a pattern of providing an economically sketched layout for other inkers to finish. Blake Bell observed that this is similar to a strategy employed by Rand's Atlas Shrugged character, John Galt, who did work for hire, but reserved his creative energies for his own projects.
Ditko's creation (with writer Tom DeFalco) of Speedball in 1988 stood out from his other 1980s Marvel work. Though he continued to leave the inking to others, Ditko plotted the series, with scripting mostly done by Roger Stern. The character was introduced in a Spider-Man annual before getting his own title, emerging from a Spider-Man-esque origin that involved another teenager running afoul of another lab mishap. The look of the character, however, was distinct and his powers manifested through the flash and pop of a giddily visible cartoon physics. The series lasted 10 issues, ending in 1989. The character was later revived by other creators and recruited into The New Warriors in 2014.
In addition to his Marvel work and several stories for Archie's Red Circle superhero line, Ditko tirelessly sought out venues among the many newly launched indy publishers in the 1980s. Identified as part of the old guard of superhero artists, Ditko was given back-up series in Kirby's Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers and Silver Star for Pacific Comics. Ditko intended The Mocker, about a vigilante who terrorized criminals with his power over darkness, as a black-and-white series, but it appeared in the back of the second issue of the color Silver Star title before disappearing again into the darkness. The Missing Man, created with Mark Evanier, made several appearances in the back of Captain Victory and in Pacific Presents. The character exercised one of the more impractical powers in the history of superheroes — the ability to partially disappear, leaving behind, Cheshire-Cat-like, partially sketched facial features and rubbery stick-figure limbs — but he had considerable visual flair, with comic elements reminiscent of Will Eisner or Jack Cole. The Faceless Ones, done for First Comics with writer Jack Harris, lasted only three episodes in the back of Warp. Static, initially published by Eclipse, was a rare case of a character created and owned by Ditko. The character, who fought super-villains with the help of a hazardous force-field-generating suit, appeared in Eclipse Monthly #1–3 in 1983. Ditko took the series with him to Charlton in 1985 and finally to Renegade Press, which published three issues of Ditko's World featuring Static in 1986.
In addition to publishing Static, Eclipse co-founder Dean Mullaney and his wife, Eclipse editor cat yronwode, proposed to do a retrospective of Ditko's work called The Art of Steve Ditko. The original author dropped out of the project, but Mullaney and yronwode pursued the project with increasing enthusiasm after they tracked down biographical material using Ditko's high school yearbook and made contact with one of Ditko's brothers. Ditko had given his approval until he discovered that the scope of the book had expanded to include this biographical information. He angrily broke off his relationship with Eclipse, taking Static with him, and refused to cooperate any further on The Art of Steve Ditko. As fate would have it, the biography never saw the light of day. All the material gathered for the book was washed away without a trace in 1986 when a massive flood hit the town of Guerneville, California, and destroyed the Eclipse offices. Cue The Mocker laughing as he fades to black.
As the 1990s began, Jim Shooter, who was running Valiant Comics after being ousted as Marvel's editor-in-chief, became a steady source of work for Ditko. Between 1991 and 1992, Ditko worked on Valiant's Shadowman, World Wrestling Federation, Magnus: Robot Fighter, Solar and X-O Manowar. Valiant dropped both Shooter and Ditko in 1993, but Shooter launched another line, which he named Defiant, in 1994. Ditko was invited to work on the new line, but produced art for only a single issue of Dark Dominion before walking away from the company. As Shooter has explained it, Ditko objected that the premise of the Defiant world was "Platonic" in its assumption that ideal or phantasmal forms exist behind the surface of the real world, whereas Ditko considered himself Aristotelian, in that he believed the real-world surface is all there is. He took a similar stand when offered work by editor Ron Fontes on an indy anthology title featuring a vampire. The creator of Doctor Strange and artist on countless Marvel, Charlton and Warren horror stories cited objectivist principles in his refusal to work on any story that featured supernatural elements.
In 1993, between the two Shooter engagements, Ditko produced a 29-page comic for Dark Horse called The Safest Place in the World. The story, involving a menace-exposing microfilm protected by heroic individuals in the face of evil Eastern European security forces, incorporated many of Ditko's habitual themes and was essentially a one-man project. It was owned by Ditko and later reprinted in black white by Ditko and Robin Snyder.
In 1994, working with scripter Roy Thomas, Ditko penciled and inked issues #1–4 of Jack Kirby's Secret City Saga (absent only from issue #0) for Topps, as well as the first and only issue of Captain Glory. Both titles were based on concepts invented by Kirby. Ditko also inked Batton Lash's pencils on a Wolff and Byrd story in Satan's Six #1. The following year, Ditko penciled all four issues of Marvel's Phantom 2040, an adaptation, with writer Peter Quinones, of the animated series. A couple of filler stories featuring, respectively, Iron Man and Sub-Mariner in 1998 were his last work for Marvel. Ditko produced two issues of material toward a projected ongoing series called Steve Ditko's Strange Avenging Tales to be published by Fantagraphics in 1997, but only the first issue appeared before the project ran afoul of a production error and Ditko's unforgiving nature.
The 1990s and the new century were a period in which Ditko gradually disappeared from mainstream comics. He continued to draw, but his work was harder and harder to find, reaching only an increasingly rarefied audience. He was like The Missing Man: there and yet not there. He was in the phone book for anybody to call, but a closed book to any fan, journalist or historian who tried to shine a light on him. In a sense, he had ceased to interact with us for a long time. The world he drew didn't look like the world we were living in. Even into the 21st century, his characters, with their fedoras and bobby sox, continued to dress and groom themselves as if they still inhabited the world of Ditko's youth. Even Peter Parker in 1962 had looked like he belonged to an earlier era. It was as if Ditko had locked himself in his studio in the 1950s and continued to draw from memory alone.
There's nothing unusual, of course, about an artist withdrawing from the marketplace in his senior years. Ditko was after all, in his 70s when the century turned. The remarkable thing was how much he continued to apply himself to his art, still conjuring up new characters and using them as conduits for philosophical expression, even as he approached his 90s.
In editor/writer Robin Snyder, Ditko found what may have been his closest and most enduring relationship since his studio-sharing days with Eric Stanton. Their professional connection went back to 1983, when Snyder edited Ditko's work on Archie Red Circle titles like The Fly and The Mighty Crusaders. In 1985, when Ditko left Eclipse for Charlton, Snyder again edited Ditko's stories in Charlton Action featuring Static. And after Charlton shut its doors for good, Snyder oversaw Ditko's transition to Renegade Press, working with the artist on titles like Revolver, Murder and Static. Their rapport was great enough that when Renegade suspended publication in 1988, Snyder and Ditko decided to self-publish a black-and-white collection of Ditko's Static stories. This was followed in 1989 and 1990 by more cheap, black-and-white trade paperbacks mixing repackaged reprints with new material, including The Ditko Public Service Package, a 112-page slash-and-burn commentary on the comics industry mostly in comics form. And when mainstream venues finally dried up for Ditko at the end of the century, these Ditko/Snyder-published collections were the format he returned to.
By this time, most of Ditko's 1950s-era contemporaries in the comics field had died or retired, but for the next couple of decades, Ditko, with Snyder, continued to issue regular "packages" of new and old work — approximately 20 more titles as of 2017. With little or no distribution to comics shops, the books were sold by direct mail order and eventually Kickstarter was used to raise funds and connect with readers. The creator-owned character he returned to most frequently was Mr. A, who had been spelling out Ditko's ethical principles since 1967. In a sense, Mr. A, with his merciless, cocksure enforcement of an absolute moral code, fit right in with such contemporary antiheroes as Judge Dredd, Marshal Law and Frank Miller's Batman. (Miller had proposed to collaborate on a Mr. A series with Ditko in the early 1990s, but Ditko had declined.) Except that Ditko didn't consider the character to be an antihero. To Ditko, Mr. A was a rare pure hero in an age of moral wimps and super-powered alcoholics.
Interviewed in the documentary In Search of Steve Ditko, writer Alan Moore described the character of Rorschach in Watchmen: "Even if his politics are completely mad, he has this ferocious moral integrity … that was my take on Steve Ditko." Moore, whose original proposal for Watchmen would have essentially killed off the Charlton superheroes, told interviewer Jon B. Cooke in Comic Book Artist #9, "I have to say I found Ayn Rand's philosophy laughable. It was a 'white supremacist dream of the master race' burnt in an early 20th-century form. … I at least felt that, though Steve Ditko's political agenda was very different to mine, Steve Ditko had a political agenda, and that in some ways set him above most of his contemporaries."
Ditko would seem to have been as faithful a follower of Randian philosophy as Rand could have wished for. It's not hard to find contradictions in Ditko's logic, but he could never be accused of hypocrisy. When movies based on characters he had been instrumental in creating began earning millions of dollars for their corporate owners, he made no attempt to claim a share in the profits. He even declined to support the campaign for Marvel to return Jack Kirby's original art. He seemed to have little interest in fame or wealth, asking only that be allowed to practice his art in his own way.
As fans, we think we're entitled to know everything about our heroes, but Ditko had nothing but disdain for this hunger. If he had no time for us, it may have been because he believed, perhaps rightly, that we were a distraction from his work. But still he kept reaching out to us, to anyone who was still listening, through his art. Now that Steve Ditko, the man, is gone, his life's work is what we have left: just the way he always wanted it.


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The Issue With /etc/issue
I like VMware Fusion a lot. It's a great tool to run various OS's on my Mac. Even though the Mac underlying BSD like system works well for most of what I do, every once in a while having access to a native Linux environment is hard to beat. One issue that can be annoying is working in a bare bones Linux VM via the VMware console. It is not much fun, requiring manual mouse release and lacking cut and paste between host and VM. The easiest way to resolve this is to use ssh. However, what is the IP address of the VM? And oh, after months of not having used it, what is the login?
Here it comes, /etc/issue to the rescue! Let's display our IP address and login credentials at the login prompt. I am using the Linux VM in a walled garden environment, security is of little concern here. I am using this in Debian Wheezy. Other dittos may require slight changes…
Make a copy of our /etc/issue file.
Create the file /etc/network/if-up.d/show-ip
Make sure the file is executable
And that's it. Now lease, if your login credentials are root/test and user/test you may really want to consider updating the /etc/network/if-up.d/show-ip script with your actual values.


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Smoked and Stuffed Meatballs
Prep Time: 10 Min | Cook Time: 80 Min
- 1 1.5 Lbs Ground Beef
- 2 1/4 Cup Pork Panko (Ground Pork Rinds)
- 3 1 Tbsp Favorite BBQ Spice Rub
- 4 1/2 Tbsp Dried Thyme
- 5 1/2 White Onion (Finely Diced)
- 6 3 Cloves Garlic (Finely Minced)
- 7 2 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
- 8 1 Large Egg
- 9 1 Tbsp Parmesan Cheese (Shredded)
- 10 4 Mozzarella Cheese Sticks, Cut Roughly 1/2 Square Pieces
- 11 1 Cup Sugar Free Barbecue Sauce
These homemade Smoker and Stuffed meatballs are the perfect recipe for family gatherings. The hand-rolled meatballs are packed with herbs & cheese, then cooked with delicious hardwood smoke.
Instructions1. Preheat your smoker to 225 degrees with your favorite wood.
2. While preheating, mix together the Panko, spice rub, thyme, onion, garlic, Worcestershire, egg and Parmesan cheese in a large bowl Add in the ground beef and mix until incorporated.
3.Place a ball of the ground beef mixture in the palm of your hand, flatten, and place a piece of the cheese in the center. Fold up the sides of the meat mixture to completely cover the cheese and roll into a ball.
4.Place in a large cast iron skillet. Repeat until finished. Smoke at 225 for 45-50 min until they reach a temp of 155. Remove skillet and cover the meatballs in the BBQ sauce. Put back in your smoker and continue to cook for 15-20 mins or until an internal temperature of 165 degrees.
5.Serve immediately.


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