STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH Vs. P A MADHU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Our hard-won freedom from British yoke ushered in a new era of progress and prosperity resulting in setting up of a large number of industries of all sorts and kinds in various spheres, some of them being Government controlled and some of them in the private sector. Labour and industrial laws of the country passed after independence created a sense of new awakening in the labour force which became more and more conscious of the rights and privileges conferred on them by the laws. Although disputes between the labour and management are now a common feature of the industrial life of the country yet seldom in the history of industrial disputes has it ever happened that a dispute assumed such large proportions as to take the toll of a human life resulting in a coldblooded murder in broad day light and that too in a Court premises.

(2.) Such an extraordinary event is the subject-matter of this appeal by special leave against the judgment of the Allahabad' High Court where a Secretary of the Labour Union seems to have run amuck and fired several shots by a country-made pistol on an officer of the management and killed him at the spot.

(3.) The facts of the case have been detailed in the judgments of the learned Sessions Judge and the High Court and need not be repeated. The matter, therefore, lies within a narrow compass and we propose only to examine the reasons and the inferences drawn by the High Court for aqquitting the respondent, Madhu.