RAMESH CHAND Vs. STATE OF HIMACHAL PRADESH

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This appeal has been preferred by the accused convict against his conviction and sentence under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. He is accused of pouring kerosine oil on the Smt. Bholi Devi and setting her ablaze on 17-5-1999 as a consequence whereof she died on 18-5-1999. The defence of the accused is that Sidhu alias Mohinder, husband of the deceased, is a notorious criminal and deals in the distillation and sale of illicit liquor and the police officials of Police Post, Nagrota Surian, where the report was lodged, are helping Sidhu in his work of illicit distillation whereas the accused had been objected to it. Therefore, he has been falsely implicated in the case.

(2.) During the course of hearing of this appeal when the learned counsel for the appellant was reading statement of Head Constable Parma Nand (PW-15), who partially investigated the case, a doubt arose about the correct recording of the English version of his statement to the following effect :

(3.) To find out whether the aforesaid English translation of the statement of the witness is correct or not we perused Hindi version of his statement and found that English translation of his statement is not correct. In these circumstances, to ensure that there may not be other mistakes in the English translation we compared the English translation of the statements with the Hindi version and found some discrepancies in such translation.