(1.) The present appeal has been preferred against judgement and order dtd. 30/11/2009 passed by the Division Bench of the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur in the Criminal Appeal No. 290/2002 whereby the High Court upheld the conviction and sentence imposed upon the present two appellants under Sec. 302 read with Sec. 34 of the Indian Penal Code (hereinafter referred as 'IPC') while setting aside the conviction of the third accused and thus, acquitting him.
(2.) As the two appellants are seeking reversal of the concurrent findings by two courts, the Sessions Court and the High Court, this Court has to tread very cautiously as observed by this Court on numerous occasions including in Mekala Sivaiah v. State of Andhra Pradesh, (2022) 8 SCC 253 wherein it has been held that unless the findings are perverse and rendered in ignorance of material evidence, this Court should be slow in interfering with concurring findings. Thus it was, observed in Mekala Sivaiah (supra) as follows:
(3.) Keeping the aforesaid principle in mind, this Court would proceed to decide the appeal at hand to examine whether there is some manifest error or illegality and if any grave and serious miscarriage of justice on account of misreading or ignoring material evidence has occurred in the present case. This invariably would require a proper examination of the facts and context of the case, for which we must revisit the background facts of the case and evidence adduced.