MAHANTAPPA Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Seventeen persons, including the ten appellants before us, were tried by the Sessions Judge, Raichur for rioting, murder and other cognate offences and acquitted. Assailing their acquittal the respondent-State of Karnataka filed an appeal in the High Court, during the pendency of which three of them died and, resultantly, the appeal as against them abated. Of the surviving fourteen, the High Court upheld the acquittal of three and, reversing the acquittal of the other eleven (who were arrayed as A1, A2, A4 to A10, A12 and A13 before the trial Court and will henceforth be so referred to), convicted them under Section 148, I.P.C. and 302, 307, 449, 436 and 201 I.P.C., all read with Section 149, I.P.C. A9 died thereafter and the remaining ten filed the instant appeal under Section 379 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

(2.) (a) According to the prosecution case on October 10, 1985, at or about 10 a.m. the accused persons formed themselves into an unlawful assembly armed with various weapons in village Bappur and, in prosecution of their common object, accosted Veerabhadrappa (PW-1) and Pampanagowda (the deceased), when they came out of the hotel of Pampayya (PW-4) and assaulted the former with a sword near the house of one Nabeebi. Thereafter they chased PW-1 and the deceased who, being frightened, took shelter in the nearby house of Neelamma (PW-8), after bolting the door of the house from inside. They then attempted to set the house of PW-8 on fire by pouring kerosene soaked lighted cotton inside the house. Finding no other alternative when PW-8 opened the door of her house, the accused persons trespassed into it assaulted PW-1 and dragging the deceased out of the house killed him with the weapons they were carrying. They then threw the dead body in the hut of one Hajamara Mahantappa and set it on fire with a view to destroying the evidence of the murder.

(3.) The accused persons pleaded not guilty to the charges framed against them and contended that they had been falsely implicated due to enmity.