BABAN CHHAGAN MALI Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioners, hereinafter referred to as " the accused" are challenging their conviction and sentence recorded by the learned Assistant Sessions Judge of Dhule in Sessions Case No. 129 of 1974 and confirmed by the learned Sessions Judge of Dhule in Criminal Appeal No. 1 of 1976. Both the accused were prosecuted for offences punishable under sections 366, 366 read with 109, 376, 376 read with 109, 325 and 342 of the Indian Penal Code. The prosecution case was that the prosecutrix, one Ramila, examined as P.W. No. 2, who is an unmarried girl, was working in a Khandsari sugar factory, which is about one and half miles away from a place called Buddhaval to which she belongs. Buddhaval itself is about three miles away from Taloda, which is the Tahsil headquarters in the District of Dhule.

(2.) Accused No. 1 hails from Taloda where he runs a hotel and from what has come on record he seems to be a somewhat prosperous farmer owning a garden land and a jeep bearing No. MSC 244. The Khandsari sugar factory is at Taloda and one person, who is referred to by the prosecution witnesses as Kisan Shet, was the Manager of the factory at the relevant time. On 5th of February, 1974, says the prosecution, accused No. 1 went to the factory in his jeep driven by accused No. 2 at about 9 p.m. Thereafter accused No. 1, who was in an inebriated State, started catching some of the female labourers working in the factory. He failed in his two attempts and succeeded in the third by catching hold of Ramila, whom he forcibly lifted and put in the back side of the jeep. From there he drove to the garden land where there was a hut. Defence witness No. 2 Narsi was the watchman of that garden land. It is alleged by the prosecution that after taking Ramila in the hut accused No. 1 forcibly committed sexual intercourse with her. This he did twice in that night.

(3.) The prosecution then alleges that in the morning of 6th February, 1974 accused No. 1 allowed her to go away in the company of Narsi who accompanied her upto the factory at Taloda from where she went on her own to her house. Before she did that, however, she went to the house of one Kusumbai who, as the evidence shows, is the mistress of accused No. 1. There she disclosed what has happened to her in the previous night. It is only thereafter that she went to her house. It is alleged by the prosecution that she first disclosed this incident to her grandmother who, however, has not been examined. Her mother was not in the house and it is only at about 4 p.m. on 6 February, 1974 that her father returned to her house from his own land. At this time one Kochari, who was a co-worker of Ramila and who had witnessed the kidnapping that had taken place on the night of 5th, come to the house of Ramila and informed her father about the incident. Thereafter all of them went to the police at Taloda and lodged the first information report, whereafter investigation followed.