PRANDAS Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by special leave from the decision of the High Court at Nagpur, allowing the appeal of the Government of the Central Provinces and Berar under S. 417, Criminal P. C., against the acquittal of the appellant by the Sessions Judge of Bilaspur, and convicting him for committing murder of one Gayaram and causing hurt to his wife, Bahartin, and sentencing him to transportation for life and three months' rigorous imprisonment under Ss. 302 and 323 respectively of the Indian Penal Code.

(2.) The case of the proseuction as presented in the trial Court may be shortly stated as follows. In village Taga, which adjoins village Dhanwa, where the alleged crime is said to have been committed, there is a field belonging to the deceased, Gayaram, and his sons, in which paddy was sown in 1948. On 15-8-1948, Hiraram, one of Gayaram's sons, arranged to bring water into this field from the field of one Tiharu, one of his relations, by making an opening in the ridge of an adjoining field belonging to one Sadhram. On the same day, in the afternoon, one Sukhchaindass, brother of the appellant, Prandas, stopped the water flowing from Sadhram's field, alleging that Pradas had asked him not to allow the water to pass through that field as he had purchased it from Sadhram.

(3.) The same evening, between 9 and 9-45 P. M., several reports were recorded by the police officer in-charge of police station, Jangir, which is at a distance of 3 miles from the place of occurrence, including the report of Hariram, which has been treated as the first information report in the present case, and that of Prandas and his relations who were also injured in the course of occurrence and who gave their own versions thereof. Prandas's version which forms the ground work of the defence story put forward at the trial, was practically the same as the prosecution version as to the events which led to the clash. But it gives a different picture of the actual occurrence since, according to him, it was Hiraram who opened the assault by attacking him and Gayaram and his men were the aggressors.