SARWAN SINGH Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The three appellants herein, who are father and two sons, were accused of having caused the death of their co-villager Shangara Singh deceased, respectively by means of a Gandasa, Takua and Kirpan. There were as many as 17 injuries on the deceased. Those were in the nature of stab wounds. incised wounds and contused wounds suggesting that three kinds of weapons had been used. The prosecution alleges that there was previous enmity between the parties. Some of the people on the accused side had sometimes back been accused of a crime in which the deceased had appeared as an eyewitness. But despite that the accused in that case had been acquitted. Thus. the present accused bore ill will against the deceased for having come forward to depose against them. The prosecution case further is that in order to avenge themselves, the deceased was caught hold of while passing on the fateful day through the village street and inflicted injuries. Even a day earlier to that, there had been some verbal altercation between the parties with regard to the digging of earth from one of the plots in possession of the deceased.

(2.) The prosecution, to prove its case, relied on two dying declarations made by the deceased as also on the evidence of two eye-witnesses - Public Witness s 14 and 15. One dying declaration had been made to Doctor g. S. Dhindsa, Public Witness -2, at the hospital where the deceased in an injured condition had immediately been moved to. The other one was to the Police on its being requisitioned and on their arrival at the hospital. The dying declaration to the doctor was in the form of a questionnaire which would be worth reproduction:

(3.) The doctor was driven to record the dying declaration after waiting for the Police for some time. sensing the condition of the deceased getting worsened. The Police recorded the statement nearly an hour thereafter. That is a narration which supplies some more details. All the same, the substratum of the case remained the same inasmuch the appellants were specifically named as the assailants, armed with the respective weapons. The details supplied in the dying declaration made to the Police pertain mainly to the motive and the details of the occurrence.