CHARAN SINGH Vs. UNION OF INDIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner was enrolled in the Army on 28. 12. 1991 and was serving with the 18 RR Battalion in Manipur area in 1996. The incident occurred on the intervening night of 5th/6th April 1996 when the petitioner and the deceased after performing their sentry duties together from 23:00 to 02:00 hours went to sleep on a blanket next to each other in the verandah of a quarter guard. The petitioner woke up around 03:45 hours and shot dead the deceased with his rifle. The deceased died on the spot. The petitioner was apprehended and was tried by the Summary General Court Martial (SGCM) from 18. 8. 1997 to 12. 9. 1997. The statement of the accused was recorded where he accepted his guilt. The petitioner was held guilty of committing offence under Section 302 of the IPC having committed the murder of the deceased Lance Naik Birender Tiwari and was sentenced to life imprisonment and was dismissed from service on 12. 9. 1997. The post confirmation petition under Section 164 (2) of the Army Act has since been rejected and the petitioner has been undergoing sentence at District Jail, bhiwani. The petitioner seeks to challenge these two orders.

(2.) LEARNED counsel for the petitioner initially did seek to canvass the proposition that a GCM should have been held and not an SGCM and the prosecution must stand on its own legs and not on the absence of any defence. The sum and substance of the plea of the learned counsel for the petitioner is that the petitioner possibly suffered momentary insanity and thus the benefit of Section 84 of the IPC should be available to him. In the absence of any motive it is pleaded in the alternative that the case falls under Section 304 Part II of the IPC.

(3.) LEARNED counsel for the petitioner after advancing the arguments fairly submitted that it would be difficult to sustain these challenges in view of the nature of the statement made by the petitioner as also the evidence on record including of psychiatrists who confirmed that the mental state of the petitioner was normal. Thus three separate witnesses who are experts in the field have deposed in this behalf. Learned counsel, thus, confines his prayer only to the relief that in the given peculiar facts of the case the petitioner having already completed more than twelve (12) years of sentence it would be a fit case on completion of fourteen (14) years of sentence for consideration by the Army authorities for review of sentence so that the petitioner may get his freedom as a mitigating circumstance on the expiry of fourteen (14) years.