MANJEET KAUR Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This criminal revision by Smt Manjit Kaur is directed against an order dated 5-3-1984 of Sh. P.L. Singla, Additional Sessions Judge whereby she and her husband H.S. Suri were directed to be charged under Section 302/34 JPC for the murder of Arun Kumar Gupta on the night between 26th and 27th August, 1982. The charge was framed on 12-3-1984.

(2.) The background of the prosecution case is that Arun Kumar Gupta was having a factory at Shahdara, and manufacturing copper and super enamel wires. He had got some machines installed there, which were not working properly and as such he engaged the services of H.S. Suri for their rectification and putting them in order. An amount of Rs. 50,000.00 was said to have been paid to him for this purpose. H.S. Suri had a similar factory of his own in partnership with others. H.S. Suri was, however, able to set right two of the machines, while the third did not still operate properly. In the meanwhile Arun Kumar Gupta decided to dispose of the factory along with the machinery.

(3.) On the morning of 26-8-1982, Arun Kumar Gupta left his house in Lajpat Nagar in his fiat car No. BRQ 6465. Generally he used to have a driver, but on that date in the absence of the driver he himself drove the car to the factory. He, however, did not return back home till about 10.30 P.M., and, therefore, his wife Mrs. Lily Gupta worried. She, therefore, in another car driven by the driver, went to the factory of her husband, but did not find him there. It was then about 11.30 P.M. When she was returning from there, she crossed a car driven by H.S. Suri, and that car happened to be the same which belonged to her husband, and in which he had gone to the factory in the morning. She then went behind the car and contacted H.S. Suri. The latter told her that Arun Kumar Gupta's car had developed a defect and as such he had taken H.S. Suri's car about half an hour earlier, and must have by then reached his house. Lily Gupta went back home, but still did not find her husband there. She, therefore, felt perturbed and went to the house of H.S. Suri in Vivek Vihar. There she found the Ambassador car of H.S. Suri standing there. It was in this car in which Arun Kumar Gupta was said to have gone leaving behind his fiat car with H.S. Suri when it had developed defect. Lily Gupta pressed the bell of the house of H.S. Suri. From there Manjit Kaur, wife of H.S. Suri looked out from a window, and when enquired about H.S. Suri, and that she had met him on the way in the car as aforesaid, Manjit Kaur replied curtly that she seemed to be mistaking that she had seen H.S. Suri in the car of Aiun Kumar Gupta, Finding no clue about her husband from there, Lily Gupta went around in search of him, and then at about 3 or 3.15 A.M. found his fiat car lying abandoned near Loni Road. Its doors were lying open and the files scattered therein. She then contacted the police, and from there a police officer went with her to the house of H.S. Suri. However, there they found the house looked, and the Ambassador car of H.S. Suri which was earlier standing there, missing. The police officer then tried to look into the house with a ladder which he managed to obtain, and jumped in. It was then found that in the bed room of H.S. Suri's house, the dead body of Arun Kumar Gupta was lying in blood. He had been shot dead. Both H.S. Suri and his wife Manjeet Kaur were missing. It was then 4.45 A.M.