TULSI Vs. STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The two appeals have been preferred against the judgment and order dated 4-8-1981 passed by Sri D.C. Srivastava, the then Additional Sessions Judge, Gyanpur, Varanasi in S.T. No. 94 of 1977, State v. Vijay Narain whereby he convicted all the five accused-appellants of the Offence under Section 395, I.P.C. and sentenced each of them to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of five years. One Ram Lal co-accused was acquitted by the learned Additional Sessions Judge and the State has not challenged his acquittal by way of filing an appeal.

(2.) Out of the above five accused appellants, Mohan accused-appellant (Criminal Appeal No. 1737 of 1981) was in custody at the time of his trial and after conviction he had already served out his sentence and the statement of his counsel Sri D.S. Tewari is that after being released from jail, he met his natural death. So now we have to deal with the cases as against Tulsi and Shitla Prasad accused appellant of Criminal Appeal No. 1737 of 1981 and Vijay Narain and Ravindra Nath accusued-appellants of Criminal Appeal No. 1760 of 1981.

(3.) It is a case of dacoity. The factum of dacoity is not controverted before this Court. The dacoity took place in the night of 24th/25th Dec. 1976 at 1.30 O'clock in the houses of Surendra Nath, Raj Narain, Ramraj Dubey Girja Shankar, Radhey Shyam and Prabhu Narain in Village Arjunpur, Police Station Suriyawan, distict Varanasi (now district Bhadohi). According to the prosecution case, Ravindra Nath (PW 2) set fire to a heap of dry sugar cane leaves which emitted light at the time of occurrence, that the witnesses were also flashing their torches and the dacoits were also flashing their torches and in the light of the said fire and the light of torches, the witnesses had idenfified the accused-appellants. No stolen property was recovered during the investigation.