TRILOCHAN MISRA Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This revision is against the appellate judgment of the learned Additional Sessions Judge of Ganjam-Nayagarh maintaining the convictions of the petitioners under Section 147, I.P.C., and the sentence of four months rigorous imprisonment passed by a 1st Class Magistrate of Khurda. The learned Additional Sessions Judge further maintained the order under Section 106, Cr. P. C., passed by the Magistrate directing the petitioners to execute bonds for Rs. 500/- each with two sureties of like amount for maintaining peace for a period of two years.

(2.) It is unchallenged that in 1947 acute party factions were prevailing between some residents of village Chasangar on the one hand and those of Mangalpur on the other in Banpur thana of Puri District. Several litigations, civil and criminal were fought out between the two factions and the occurrence out of which the present revision has arisen is said to have taken place in consequence of this bitter enmity. All the petitioners except Trilochan and Biswanath are residents of village Chasangar. The complainant's party are all residents of village Mangalpur. The prosecution case is that at about 10 A.M. on 8-7-1947 the petitioners lay in ambush and severely be laboured the complainants party consisting of about eight persons when they appeared near a brinjal field in Mangalpur. Four persons were injured on the complainant's side but none of the petitioners sustained any injury. Both the lower Courts have accepted the essential facts of the prosecution case regarding the presence of the sixteen petitioners at the spot and their joining in the assault on the complainant's party. The trial court, however, believed the prosecution evidence regarding the specific part ascribed to some of the petitioners and convicted them under Sections 323, 324 and 325, I. P. C., in respect of the assaults committed by them. The lower appellate Court however thought it unsafe to accept the prosecution evidence regarding the part played by each of the petitioners in the commission of the crime; but it accepted the prosecution story regarding the presence of the sixteen petitioners at the spot and their participation in the assault on the complainant's party in furtherance of their common object. Consequently, the charge under Section 147, I. P. C., against all the 16 petitioners seems to have been established beyond any doubt and as the finding on this point is a pure finding on facts, in which the two Courts below have taken a concurrent view, I am not inclined to interfere.

(3.) Mr. Ray learned counsel for the petitioners raised the following two important points of law.