PILLU @ PRAHLAD Vs. STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These appeals are directed against the judgment and order dtd. 11/2/2010, as passed by the High Court of Madhya Pradesh at Jabalpur in Criminal Appeal No. 766 of 2001, whereby the High Court has dismissed the appeal filed by the present appellants while maintaining their conviction of the offence under Sec. 302/34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 ('IPC') and sentence of life imprisonment with fine of Rs.3,000.00 each with default stipulations.

(2.) In challenge to the concurrent findings of fact, the learned counsel for the appellants has essentially put forward the submissions that in this case, the principal witnesses of the prosecution, namely, PW-1 Shankerlal and PW-11 Rameshwar Prasad could not have been relied upon for the reasons that PW-1 had not supported the prosecution case in entirety and was, in fact, declared hostile whereas PW-11 was introduced in the investigation as an alleged eye-witness after twenty-two days of the lodging of FIR. In the second limb of submissions, learned counsel has argued that even taking the prosecution case on its face value, the offence against the appellants would not travel beyond the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder because, the case would be squarely covered by Exception 4 to Sec. 300 IPC. He has also referred to and relied upon the following passage in the decision of this Court in the case of Pulicherla Nagaraju Alias Nagaraja Reddy v. State of A.P.: (2006) 11 SCC 444: -

(3.) Learned counsel for the respondent has opposed the submissions so made and has duly supported the judgment and order impugned, while referring to the statements of witnesses in their totality. He has also argued that the applicability of Exception 4 to Sec. 300 IPC is ruled out in the present case for the reason that it had not been a matter of sudden fight inasmuch as, per the version of the witnesses, it had not been an incident where the parties were engaged in fight with each other; and the version had been that the appellants assaulted the victim after trying to pressurize him to refrain from giving evidence in another criminal case.