BALBIR Vs. STATE OF HARYANA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Seldom would the courts have come across such a weird scenario as the present case has presented. In respect of one victim in one murder episode two diametrically divergent stories were put to test in two different trials before the same Sessions Court and both were prosecuted by the same Public Prosecutor. The Sessions Court rejected the story, which the police had propounded, after a full-fledged investigation, as untrue but the same trial Court approved the other divergent version as the true story. Resultantly the man whom the investigating agency found to be the real murderer was shown his escape route while the man whom the other side dubbed as the culprit stands convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

(2.) The convicted person did not succeed in getting himself extricated from the murder charge even in appeal as the High Court confirmed his conviction and sentence. This Court has once dismissed the appeal filed by the appellant by Special Leave (on 17- 2-1997) but on a legal point, pertaining to the procedure to be followed in such two cases, this Court, reopened it and annulled the said judgment of this Court and put the appeal back for disposal afresh. The said legal point has been formulated by this Court as follows:

(3.) For dealing with the aforesaid legal point a brief sketch of the facts has to be stated. The backdrop of the murder (the subject-matter of this case) is the following:The name of the person murdered in this case is Om Prakash. His father Harpat and appellant's father Bagravat were primogenitors of the two different families which engaged in annihilating each other. In 1972 the said Harpat was murdered for which Bagravat (father of appellant) was indicted by the police, and in 1978 Bagravat was murdered for which Harpat's son Manphool was challenged by the police. Normally the retaliating cycle should have completed one circle of its rotation, but it seems to have continued to rotate.