MANGESH DEVIDAS JADHAV Vs. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The five accused persons came to be charged by the District and Additional Sessions Judge, Thane for Ss. 147, 148, 149 read with Ss. 302, 201, 323, 324 and 427 of the Indian Penal Code (for short, "IPC ") in Sessions Case No.135 of 2015. They faced an accusation that on 22/07/2014, they formed an unlawful assembly in prosecution of their common object to commit murder of Sanjay Rokade and being armed with deadly weapons, they intentionally and knowingly caused the death of Sanjay by means of iron rod. They also faced charge of throwing the mobiles in creek in order to screen themselves from legal punishment and thus committed an offence under Sec. 201 read with Sec. 149 of IPC. All the accused persons pleaded not guilty and chose to be tried and, hence, faced trial in Sessions Case No.135 of 2015.

(2.) It is the case of the prosecution that there was a dispute between the deceased Sanjay and Manish and Mangesh Jadhav (Accused Nos.1 and 2) and there were complaints filed against each other. PW 1-Jayant Bhoir, being friend of Sanjay, used to accompany him most of the time and in the past, he was threatened not to continue in his company, as they were going to murder him.

(3.) In order to establish its case, prosecution has examined twenty witnesses, which include the mother of the deceased as well as his friends, PW 1, PW 2 and PW 3 alongwith the panchas on recovery of clothes and weapons and the doctor, who examined the informant (PW 1) and another doctor, who conducted the postmortem and submitted the report, giving the cause of death. The Executive Magistrate, who conducted test identification parade of accused is examined as PW 19. The evidence brought on record by the prosecution was put to the accused and they adopted a stand of denial and did not lead any independent evidence under Sec. 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code.