NIRANJAN SINGH Vs. STATE OF M.P.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) All these appeals under Section 374 (2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 have been filed by the appellants against the judgment of conviction and order of sentence dated 06.02.2009, passed by the learned Third Additional Sessions Judge, Sagar in Sessions Trial Nos.161/2008 and 312/2008. Since all these appeals are arising out of one judgment, therefore, they are heard and decided concomitantly.

(2.) The prosecution case, in brief, is that 45 days prior to the date of incident, a quarrel took place between Roop Singh Thakur of village Rusalla with Pappu, thereafter, Roop Singh went to his house alongwith his family members and threatened him that he would kill him. On the date of incident, Pappu alongwith Munna and Balram (complainant) had gone to the temple Raikhedi for taking blessings (Prasad). When they were coming back at about 6:00 p.m. and reached near tank of Rusalla village, then Roop Singh, Arvind and Sunil armed with Lathi and Santosh with Ballam reached there. Seeing the accused persons, Pappu ran away, then Roop Singh, Arvind and Sunil have started beating Balram and Munna, thereafter they followed Pappu. Moti Singh, Bakhat Singh, Bhure, Niranjan, Raju, Sanju, Rajkumar, Pran Singh and Surendra were armed with Lathi, Ballam and Lohangi encircled Pappu and assaulted him. The accused went away leaving Pappu unconscious, assuming he was dead. The persons passing-by intimated father of Balram, who came alongwith some villagers and together they reached Police Station Rahatgarh, District Sagar to lodge the FIR. The FIR was registered and investigation was conducted. In the said incident, Pappu was murdered and as such, charge-sheet was submitted by the prosecution.

(3.) In trial, the prosecution has examined as many as 17 witnesses, out of those, PW-6 (Balram) and PW-8 (Munna) have been produced as eyewitnesses, who had also suffered injuries in the incident.