GIRIDHARI DEHURY Vs. STATE OF ORISSA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal by appellant Giridhari Dehury emanates against the impugned judgment of conviction u/s 302 I.P.C. dated 30.6.2004 and order of sentence for life imprisonment and to pay a fine of Rs.2000/- otherwise serve additional RI for months there for recorded by Additional Sessions Judge, Talchar, in S.T.No.18 of 2003, State versus Diridhari Dehury, relating to P.S. Khamar district Angul.

(2.) Shorn of unnecessary details, prosecution allegations against the appellant, as are perceptible from the FIR and depositions of fact witnesses and other evidences are that the Gobardhan Dehury, deceased, and his wife Jahaja Dehury, both were resident of village Sanda, police station Khamar district Angul and had three sons and two daughters, the appellant being their eldest son, while informant Sumanta Dehury/PW10, was their second son. Except the appellant rest of the family resided together in one house situated in down town village. Deceased by vocation was a priest as well as a sorcerer as he also used to practise witchcraft. Appellant, who had four issues, residing separately from rest of the family was all the time insisting and beseeching his father(deceased) to partition the ancestral property in which appellant had a legitimate share for which the deceased was not agreeable. Three or four days prior to the murder incident, wife and children of the appellant had left for their parental/maternal grand-father's house as, it is also alleged, that the appellant was crotchety and quarrelsome and used to fight with them. Additionally it is alleged that on 1.4.2003 deceased returned to his house from the market situated a kilometre away from their house and both the appellant and the deceased started conversing with each other while deceased's wife/PW1 gave him water to wash his hands and feet. While the deceased was bending to wash his feet that all of a sudden at that time 2.15 p.m. appellant inflicted a single hatchet blow on the neck of the deceased due to which deceased died instantaneously and squatted on the ground. The appellant escaped from the spot leaving the hatchet behind at the incident scene. Besides PW1, widow of the deceased this incident was also witnessed by Santilata Samal/PW2, Dukhabandu Behera/PW8 and others and immediately after the murder Saudamini Dehury/PW3, sister of the appellant and daughter of the deceased, came at the incident spot and saw the cadaver of her father and appellant tramping away from the spot.

(3.) Informant Sumanta Dehury/PW10, was conveyed the murder of his father at the house of his uncle where he was present at that time and therefore he rushed to his house where he scribed, FIR, Ext 3 same day which he had handed over to the I.O., at the spot at 4 p.m. on the basis of which formal FIR was registered at the police station at 6 p.m. same day at a distance of 18 KMs.