FIRAN YADAV Vs. STATE OF CHHATTISGARH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This criminal appeal under Sec. 374(2) of the CrPC is directed against the impugned judgment of conviction recorded and sentence awarded by the learned Sessions Judge by which the appellants have been convicted for offences under Ss. 302 read with Sec. 34 and 323 read with Sec. 34 of the IPC and sentenced to undergo imprisonment for life and pay fine of Rs.1,000.00 each, in default of payment of fine to further undergo additional rigorous imprisonment for three months and to undergo rigorous imprisonment for six months, respectively, with a direction to run both the sentences concurrently.

(2.) Case of the prosecution, in brief, is that one and a half years prior to the date of incident, wife of accused / appellant No.1 Firan Yadav (A-1) died on account of which, the appellants used to suspect that Jethuram (since deceased) has played witchcraft upon her by which she died and on account of that, on 28/5/2015 at 8 a.m., the appellants have assaulted Jethuram by axe and lathi and tried to kill him which was witnessed by Shiv Prasad @ Shiva (PW-2) ' brother of the deceased, who tried to intervene and he also suffered grievous injuries. Jethuram was escorted to the hospital where he died. The matter was reported to the police. Inquest was conducted vide Ex.P-13 and on the recommendation of panchas, the dead body was sent for postmortem which was conducted by Dr. Sandeep Kumar Sahu (PW-11) vide postmortem report Ex.P-29 in which cause of death was stated to be head injury due to hard and sharp object, mode of death is coma and death was homicidal in nature.

(3.) Statements of the witnesses were recorded under Sec. 161 of the CrPC. After due investigation, the accused / appellants were charge-sheeted for offence under Ss. 302 read with Sec. 34, 307 read with Sec. 34 of the IPC and Sec. 4 of the Chhattisgarh Tonhi Pratadna Nivaran Adhiniyam, 2005 and charge-sheet was filed before the jurisdictional criminal court and the case was committed to the Court of Sessions for conducting the trial and hearing and disposal in accordance with law.