STATE OF RAJASTHAN Vs. SATYANARAYAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Aggrieved by the judgment and order of acquittal passed by the high Court of Rajasthan in Criminal appeal no. 368/81, the State has filed this appeal. The respondent was convicted by the trial court for the offence punishable under Section 302 IPC and sentenced to suffer imprisonment for life.

(2.) The prosecution case was that relations between Satyanarayan the accused and Bhima his neighbour were not good as they had a dispute with respect to construction of a boundary wall and previously there was some litigation also between the parties. On the day of the incident, that is, on 26.11.80 at about 7. 00 a. m. , Bhoridevi, wife of Bhima, was sweeping in front of her house. At that time, accused Satyanarayan was standing near the window on the first floor of his house and spate out water on bhoridevi. That led to an exchange of words between her and the accused Satyanarayan. The accused came down and continued quarreling with her. By that time, other inmates of Bhima's house also came out. The accused then attacked Public Witness 2 Satyanarayan @ kaliya, a relation of Bhoridevi, with an iron pipe. He also injured Ram Gopal (Public Witness 9) and Bhoridevi (Public Witness 5) and then went back to his house. Kesar Lal-brother of Bhima, then went near the house of the accused and started questioning the accused as to why he was quarreling like that in the morning. Thereupon, the accused came out of his house with a knife and inflicted a blow on the abdomen of Kesar Lal as a result of which his intestines came out. The accused then ran away from that place. It was the prosecution case that as a result of that injury Kesar Lal died and that during the investigation that knife was discovered by the accused.

(3.) In order to prove its case, the prosecution had examined nine eye witnesses, out of whom four were injured during the incident. Out of the remaining eye witnesses public Witness 1 sitaram, Public Witness 4 Kaluram and public Witness 12 Rajdevi were, the neighbours who had seen the incident. The trial Court accepted the evidence of the injured witnesses as they received corroboration from P. Ws. 1, 4 and 12 against whom nothing could be alleged by the defence. The house of the accused and Bhima were adjacent to each other and, therefore, presence of the injured witnesses was natural. As it was established that the accused had come out with a knife and given a blow to Kesar Lal the trial Court convicted him for the offence punishable under Section 302.