DHARAM DEO SINGH Vs. STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The sole appellant has been found guilty under Sections 302 and 324, I.P.C. and sentenced to imprisonment for life and six months' R.I. respectively by the trial Court. The appeal filed by him was dismissed by the High Court. Hence the present appeal.

(2.) The prosecution case is that in Moura Jourpur there is an Intermediate College which employed 11 peons including the deceased Smt. Kalawati aged about 28 years She was married but she was staying along with her daughter aged about four years a Jeupur and she used to cook her meals in small shack and. in the night she used to ice in one of the rooms of the College. On 1-12-74 at about 7 p.m. when the deceased was cooking her food in the shack and College Chowkidar Badri and other peons who had been deputed by the College for night watch were warming themselves at an open fire closeby, the appellant Dharam Deo Singh came to the entrance of the College and called the deceased who was sitting in the shack with her four years' old daughter in her lap and as the deceased did not respond to the call of the appellant, he fired a shot at her with a double-barrel gun which he was carrying. Thereafter he caught hold of the deceased and started pulling her. The deceased continued to hold her daughter in her lap and requested the appellant to release her but he did not release her and dragged her for about 20 paces. The deceased, however, managed to free herself. The appellant then fired a gun-shot at the deceased which hit her on the buttocks. On receiving the gun-shot the deceased spun back and the appellant fired another gun-shot which struck her in the belly. The deceased fell down and died on the spot. One of the pellets from the shots fired by the appellant also hit the left foot of the four years' old girt Punami. Thereafter the appellant ran away carrying the gun. The occurrence was witnessed by P. Ws. 1 and 2. P.W. 1, however, was treated hostile. The accused pleaded not guilty and stated that he was shot at by somebody in the back of his calf muscle of right leg and he raised an alarm. and fired a gun-shot in the direction from which he had been fired and he did not know anything else. The plea appears to be that when he fired his gun in the direction from which he had been fired, the shot might have hit the deceased and her daughter. It may also be mentioned here that on that very night the brother of the appellant carried the appellant to the police station and lodged a report in which the above plea of the defence has been set up. They also deposited the gun. The appellant was taken into custody and he was examined by a doctor, who found a swelling on the right leg and a lacerated wound on the leg post and a lacerated wound on the scalp and small lacerated wounds in a group on the leg.

(3.) Both the Courts below held that page No. Ws. 1 and 2 were present on the spot and that evidence of P.W. 2 was wholly reliable and that the version given by the defence was false.