KINU CHOI Vs. STATE OF ASSAM

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Both the appeals witness a challenge to the judgment and order dated 19.07.2011 passed by the learned Addl. Sessions Judge (FTC), Sonitpur, Tezpur in Sessions Case No. 15/2007, thereby convicting the accused-appellants under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (for short hereinafter referred to as the IPC) and sentencing them to suffer rigorous imprisonment for life and to pay a fine of Rs. 1,000/-, in default, to undergo R/I for further period of 1 (one) month. We have heard Mr. S.C. Biswas, and Mr. J.C. Barman, Advocates for the accused-appellants being assisted by Ms. S.D. Choudhury, Mr. H. Rahman and Mr. D. Bania, Advocates and Mr. D. Das, learned Addl. Public Prosecutor for the State respondent.

(2.) On the FIR dated 30.09.2006 lodged by one Pitambar Tirki with the Officer-in-Charge of Misamari Police Station to the effect that at about 7.30 P.M. on the same date while he (informant) and his wife (Samari Tirki) were in their house, a few boys wanted to enter and as he resisted them, they grabbed him and demanded on the point of a dagger the consideration price of the cow that he had sold. The FIR further disclosed that the informant having expressed his inability to make the payment as no money was with him, the miscreants released him. On this incident, the informant being apprehensive went out to the nearby village seeking help and sometime later returned home and found his wife Samar Tirki lying dead inside the house.

(3.) Mr. Biswas has emphatically argued that the prosecution having failed to prove the charge against the accused-appellants, the learned trial court was in error in convicting and sentencing them by the decision assailed in the present appeals. According to the learned counsel, not only there was no eye witness to the actual incident resulting in the death of the wife of the informant, even the circumstantial evidence offered by the prosecution was not adequate enough to unerringly prove the complicity of the accused-appellants in the alleged offence. Mr. Biswas has argued that the purported seizure of the dao from the house of the Appellant No. 1 (Kinu Choi) is invalid in law as the same was not in accordance with the mandate/procedure legally prescribed. More over, there being no evidence of any blood stain on the said weapon or any report or any serological or forensic expert to connect the weapon with the offence, there was no basis to lay any nexus between the accused-appellants and the offence of murder as alleged. The learned counsel argued that the learned trial Court grossly erred in law in relying on the statements made by the witnesses under Section 161 Criminal Procedure Code (for short hereinafter referred to as the Cr.P.C.) and 164 Cr.P.C. for entering the finding of guilt against the accused-appellants thus rendering the impugned judgment and order unsustainable in law.