TULSI BAI Vs. STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Since both the criminal appeals arising out of one and the same incident, therefore, they are heard together and are being decided concomitantly.

(2.) As per the prosecution story, on 26.10.1999 at about 02:00 p.m. in village Manikpur in the house of Sakharam Jhariya (PW-3), his spiritual guide Tulsidas Gautam had come and for preparing the food, he asked his son aged about 15 years namely, Omprakash to bring some rice from his neighbour namely, Jawahar Singh. Since Omprakash did not return, at about 04:00 p.m., Phool Bai, the wife of Sakharam, went to the house of Jawahar Singh inquiring about her son but the house was locked, so, the family members alongwith other villagers searched for Omprakash who was not traced. On 27.10.1999, at about 07:00 a.m. when Sakharam was taking his cattle for grazing, he met Tulsibai, the wife of the accused, who told him that infront of her house, somebody had performed some religious activities. Sakharam alongwith Sanat Pandey, Damarilal Jhariya and Parasram Yadav went to the house of Jawahar Singh and found blood stains behind the door, verandah and signs of some religious rituals and thereafter recovered the dead body of Omprakash in the Gobar Gas Plant. Thereafter, marg intimation (Ex.P-1) was registered on the information of Girjaa Prasad. The autopsy surgeon (PW-7) conducted post-mortem, prepared the postmortem report (Ex.P-25) and there were as many as 10 injuries found over the body of the deceased.

(3.) It was also put forth by the prosecution that there was some enmity between the deceased Omprakash and son of the accused Kailash alias Lotan Singh, who was working under him for collecting Tendupatta. Thereafter, Kailash took the wages of the deceased-Omprakash from the Ranger, but did not hand it over. Later, when the deceased started his own grocery shop, it adversely affected the grocery shop of Lotan Singh. So he took some articles from the shop of the deceased, but did not pay him for that also. This culminated into enmity between the two families and finally led to the murder of Omprakash. However, the trial Court discarded these stories believed it to be a case of human sacrifice (Narbali).