MALETIRA M. JEEVAN Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners, who are arrayed as A3 and A4 in Cr. No. 107/2013 on the file of the respondent/Police registered for the offences under Sections 302, 114 r/w 34, IPC, are before this Court praying for enlarging them on bail. The respondent/Police, on the complaint of one M.S. Kalaiah S/o late Somaiah, a resident of Kuklur village in Virajpet Taluk of Kodagu District, on 28.8.13 have registered the above; case against these two petitioners and five others and have taken up investigation. It is alleged among other things in the complaint, that on 28.8.13 at about 3.50 p.m. when the deceased Kalappa, the brother of the complainant, had gone to pick up the son of the complainant from Kodava Triveni School Samaja at Virajpet Taluk, these petitioners and other five accused came in a car to the said place having formed into an unlawful assembly armed with deadly weapons like choppers etc., and thereafter in furtherance of the common object of their unlawful assembly, they committed murder of the deceased by assaulting him with lethal weapons.

(2.) Learned counsel for the petitioners submits the petitioners have been falsely implicated in the case. In this connection, he submitted admittedly the complainant is not an eye-witness to the occurrence. The two eye-witnesses to the occurrence are one Kabbachira Mahesh and P.N. Lokesh. Their statements have came to be recorded on 2.9.13 nearly about five days after the occurrence. The statements of these two eye-witnesses also does not reveal the participation of these two petitioners/accused as the assailants of the deceased. He contends that in view of the name of the petitioners having not been found either in the FIR or in the statements of the eye-witnesses, which have been recorded after five days after the occurrence, as no recovery is also made at the instance of these petitioners so far as they are also not required for the purposes of investigation and further, as they are in custody since 1.9.2013, they be released on bail.

(3.) Per contra, learned HCGP vehemently opposed the application filed by the petitioners.