JANGIR SINGH Vs. STATE OF PUNJAB

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants are five in number and they have filed this appeal as of right. They were acquitted by the trial court but convicted by the High Court on appeal filed by the State, under Section 302, Section 325 read with section 149 of the Indian Penal Code besides the offence of rioting under section 148 of the Indian Penal Code. On the first count they were each sentenced to imprisonment for life besides fine and to lesser sentences for the lesser offence.

(2.) The gist of the case against them is that all the five accused formed themselves into an unlawful assembly on the evening of 24-10-1985 and lay in ambush waiting for Bahadur Singh (deceased) to come through the road and on seeing Bahadur Singh they all launched an attack with weapons like gandasa, takua and ghope. The wife of Bahadur Singh (Ranjit Kaur, PW 10) who accompanied her husband made a bid to rescue her husband from the onslaughts of the assailants, but she too was attacked by them. Bahadur singh died at the spot. PW 10 (Ranjit Kaur) furnished first information to the police on the same evening on the basis of which FIR was registered by the police. Subsequently all the five accused were arrested and on the strength of the information elicited from 1st accused Chet Singh and third accused ginder Singh weapons of offences were recovered from concealed places.

(3.) The most important witness in this case is PW 10 (Ranjit Kaur). The importance of her evidence is that no court can possibly hold that she would not have witnessed the occurrence, for she herself sustained as many as eight injuries, some of them serious, during the occurrence. The fact that she gave the police prompt information which has reached the Magistrate on the very same night adds further credence to her version. Added to that, she narrated the incident to PW 12 Deesha Singh and PW 13 Sadhu Singh (a chowkidar) who reached the spot soon after the occurrence.