RANJIT NISHAD Vs. STATE OF C.G.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THESE appeals have been directed against the judgment and order dated 8 of August, 2007 passed in Sessions Trial No. 155/2006 by the Sessions Judge, Kanker, North Bastar (C.G.), whereby the Appellants have been convicted and sentenced in the following manner with a further direction to run the sentences concurrently:

(2.) THE facts, briefly stated, are as under:

(3.) MR. V.C. Ottalwar and MR. Rajeev Shrivastava, learned Counsel appearing on behalf of the Appellants, argued that the formation of an unlawful assembly and the Appellants being the members of the unlawful assembly was not established. It was also not established as to what was the common object of unlawful assembly. They argued that if common object of unlawful assembly was not to put the shop on fire or to commit murder of deceased Mahavir or to give the assaults to the injured persons, and someone on his own, commit the above acts, that would be an act committed on the part of that individual and no one else can be convicted with the aid of Section 149 IPC. They also argued that there was absolutely no evidence to show that who set the shop on fire and who caused the murder of the deceased. Therefore the learned Sessions Judge erred in law in convicting the Appellants under the aforementioned Sections of the IPC. Besides the above, they also argued that all the eye witnesses, referred to above, are wholly unreliable and the conviction based on the testimonies of these witnesses cannot be sustained. In fact, from a mob of many persons somebody put the shop on fire without noticing that the deceased was inside the shop, whose body was later recovered after the incident.