RAM SARAN MAHTO Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted.

(2.) The corpse of a teenaged dame was recovered from a well attached to her nuptial home. That corpse was consigned to flames without loss of time. For that incident her husband Kalpu Mahto and three others stand convicted of the offence under Section 201 of the Indian Penal Code. Though the prosecution did not even venture to establish any other offence in respect of the death of that young lady, the trial Court passed a sentence of rigorous imprisonment for seven years on one of the convicted persons while a sentence of RI for three years was imposed on the remaining convicted persons. They appealed to the H igh Court of Patna, but failed.

(3.) We cannot comprehend how the Sessions Court could have escalated the conviction to the topmost layer of the offence for awarding the maximum sentence of imprisonment for seven years as the said upper limit is fixed only for one category of cases falling under Section 201, IPC. The Sessions Judge did not even advert to the possibility of the offence falling within the aforesaid top category though he had chosen to award the maximum sentence only to one of the four convicted persons. Learned single of the Patna High Court while restating the sentence portion in his judgment seems to have committed an error in the following manner;