KALLURI VEMA REDDI Vs. REDDI GANGI REDDI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a petition made by a private party to revise the order of acquittal passed by the Additional Sessions Judge, Cuddapah. The Government had a right of appeal but they did not choose to exercise that right. The case relates to 45 persons as the accused with 27 charges against them which are indeed of a grave and serious character. All of them inter alia are charged with an offence of rioting armed with deadly weapons, an offence falling under Section 148, Indian Penal Code. They are further charged with offences under Section 302 read with Section 149, Section 307 and Section 307 read with Section 149, Indian Penal Code and Section 19 (f) of Indian Arms Act. The incident took place in the broad day light when in the rattling sound of musketry and booming shots of unlicenced firearms law and order seemed to be temporarily paralysed and the whole village was struck with terror and filled with horror. As many as four lives were lost and several persons who were made the targets of the assailants' gunshots were lucky enough to escape with only grievous or simple injuries. It is indeed a sensational case.

(2.) The C. I. D. Police Kurnool, in their attempt to bring the offenders to book, examined as many as 41 witnesses. All the accused pleaded not guilty. They however examined one witness in defence. The learned Sessions Judge found that all the four deceased died of gunshot wounds and some of the prosecution witnesses sustained gunshot injuries on the date of the incident but refused to believe the testimony of the injured, the dying declaration of one of the deceased and the sworn statements of the witnesses who belonged to the same village, on the ground that the prosecution story as revealed before the trial Judge was in some respects not quite in accord with the story narrated in the reports originally sent to the police before the investigation was started, that the statements of the witnesses before the police during investigation were in certain respects different from those in the witness box, that there were some omissions in the statements before the police and that since the village Magistrate belongs to the party of the deceased and some of the witnesses are related to the deceased their testimony on that account and on account of certain discrepancies and some inconsistency with the medical and fire arm experts' view is not entitled to credit. It is on these grounds that the learned Judge held that the prosecution did not bring home guilt to any of the accused and acquitted all the accused.

(3.) The learned counsel appearing for the petitioner strenuously argued before us that the grounds on which the order of acquittal was based are legally untenable, that the witnesses are venal, that the injuries that most of them have sustained speak for themselves, that the discrepancies pointed out are of minor character and that the finding of the learned Judge is therefore perverse lacking in true perspective of the case.