V.K.PANDEY Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants have filed these appeals under Sec. 374(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (for short, the Cr.P.C.) questioning the impugned judgment dtd. 31/5/2007 passed in Sessions Trial No. 329 of 2005 by which the learned Special Judge (Atrocities) Raipur, District Raipur, has convicted the appellants and sentenced as under:

(2.) The case of the prosecution, in brief, is that one Ram Avtar Jaggi @ Taru Jaggi (hereinafter referred to as 'the deceased'), a leader of Nationalist Congress Party was shot at 23:40 hours on 4/6/2003 in his car bearing registration No. CG-04-B-2111 and in this connection a First Information Report was lodged in P.S. Moudhapara, Raipur vide F.I.R. No. 104/2003 for the offence under Ss. 447 and 307 I.P.C. on the instance of accused-V.K.Pandey, the Station House Officer of Police Station, Moudhapara. The deceased was sent to Hospital, where he died. On 5/6/2003 at about 2.15 a.m., another report vide F.I.R. No. 105/2003 was registered for the same incident under Sec. 302 I.P.C. on the instance of Satish Jaggi (PW-41), son of the deceased. Thereafter, 5 accused persons namely- Vinod Singh @ Badal, Avinash Singh @ Lallan, Jambwant Kashyap, Shyam Sunder @ Anand Sharma and Vishwanath Rajbhar were arrested in connection with Crime No. 104/2003 by the State Police and a charge-sheet was filed against them before the concerned Court, the matter was committed and ultimately, it was registered as S.T. No. 334/2003. During the course of trial, an application under Sec. 173 (8) Cr.P.C. was moved by the Public Prosecutor for allowing a further investigation which was allowed and thereafter, on the instance of the State Government, the matter was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (for short, the CBI) for further investigation and CBI then registered Crime No. R.C-1/5/2004 dtd. 22/1/2004 under Ss. 120-B, 302 and 427 I.P.C and Sec. 25/27 of the Arms Act. Consequent upon such investigation, the C.B.I filed another charge-sheet against 31 persons including the 5 accused persons of S.T. No. 334/2003. This case was also committed to the Court of Sessions and it was registered as S.T. No. 329/2005. In S.T. No. 334/2003, in which the charge-sheet was filed by the State Police, the prosecution case was that 5 accused persons, referred to above, committed murder of the deceased and the motive of the murder was robbery. Whereas, in S.T. No. 329/2005, in which the charge-sheet was filed by the C.B.I., the prosecution case was that the deceased was shot dead by accused Chiman Singh for political reasons as a rally was going to be organized by the N.C.P. in Raipur on 10/6/2003 by the deceased and it was reported that lacs of people were to gather in rally at Raipur and this posed a political threat to the then Chief Minister Mr. Ajit Jogi and his son Amit Jogi (the acquitted coaccused) and the murder was committed after a criminal conspiracy hatched between Chiman Singh, Amit Jogi, Yahya Dhebar, Abhay Goel and Feroz Sidhique. The CBI alleged that apart from the said accused persons accused Vikram Sharma, Vinod Singh Rathore, Rakesh Kumar Sharma, Ashok Kumar Bhadoriya, Sanjay Singh @ Chunnu, Raju Bhadauriya, Ravindra Singh @ Ravi Singh, Narsi Sharma, Satyendra Singh, Vivek Singh, Lalla Bhadauriya, Sunil Gupta, Anil Pachauri, Harish Chandra and Shivendra Singh Parihar also participated in commission of murder of the deceased. The further case of the prosecution was that then 5 imposters (the accused persons of S.T. No. 334/2003) were arranged by the real culprits with the help of police officers who had carried a false investigation in Crime No. 104/2003 and a fake and false chargesheet was filed against them. The imposters and the police officers and the persons who arranged the imposters were arrayed as accused No. 21 to 29 in the C.B.I. case i.e. S.T. No. 329/2005.

(3.) The learned Special Judge (Atrocities), Raipur, District Raipur, framed charges on 28/11/2005 charging the appellants/convicts as under: