LAJJA RAM Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) LAJJARAM, aged 26, of village Jagannathpur, P. S. Ajitmal, District Etawah, has been convicted and sentenced to death under Section 302, I. P. C. , for the murder of Pragu of village Kakraiya within the same police station by the learned Additional Sessions Judge of Etawah. Lajjaram has appealed against his conviction and sentence. The record is also before us for confirmation of the death sentence. Three men, Ramdas, Kanhai and Lakhan, who were charged with the abetment of the offence, have been acquitted.

(2.) KAKRAIYA is about a mile from Jagannathpur, wad the offence is said to have been committed after, sunset on 8-3-1954. It is said that the deceased was sitting in front of his door when the aforesaid three persons who have been acquitted came up from the east and engaged him in talk in a low tone. Suddenly one of them addressed him in a loud tone. This is said to have served as a signal whereupon two other men, clad in Khaki and armed with guns, came up from the east. One of them was the appellant and the other a person whose identity has remained untraced. From a distance of about 10 paces the latter flashed a torch at Pragu and the former shot at him hitting him in the knee. As Pragu rose to his feet, the appellant again shot at him, this time hitting him in the abdomen. Pressing his hand against his wound in the abdomen, Pragu ran inside his house followed by the appellant. Pragu crossed an outer room and a courtyard and fell down in a thatched verandah adjacent to another room. The appellant, who had come up to the junction of the outer room and the courtyard, aimed his gun again at Pragu but the latter's wife Lareti, who happened to be in the room in front of which pragu had fallen, pulled him in and bolted the door. The appellant knocked at the door and then came out and went back with his companions the way he had come.

(3.) THE occurrence was witnessed by Chiddu, a nephew of the deceased, who lived in an adjacent house and was at the time having a wash on a nearby Chabutra, by Chiddu's brother Moti Lal and sister Rati and Har Prasad and Ram Sanehi, who were warming themselves round a fire pit, and by Gajadhar who, along with others, was warming himself at another fire pit. Both these fire-pits were very close to the deceased's door. Chiddu, Gajadhar and Ram Sanehi from amongst these and one other, Ram Singh, went into Pragu's house and Pragu said in their presence that ram Das, Kanhai and Lakhan had him shot at by Lajjaram to satisfy their grudge against him. In about half an hour Pragu succumbed to his injuries. It is said that the appellant was wanted in several cases of dacoity, murder and attempt to commit murder and had been absconding since 1951, and that he committed the murder because Pragu had been acting as a police informer.