KARELAL TAUTI Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant Kare Lal Tanti has preferred this appeal against the judgment and order dated 12th December, 1994 passed by the 1st Additional Sessions Judge, Banka in Sessions Case No. 64 of 1991 (G.R. Case No. 1277 of 1990) convicting him for the offence under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (hereinafter referred to as the IPC) and sentencing him to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life.

(2.) The prosecution case in brief is that Informant Prasadi Tanti in his fardbeyan dated 29.9.1990 alleged that he along with his mother-in-law (Mungia Devi), Daughter, KanIli Devi (wife of the appellant), his mother Mukhia Devi and his son Damodar Tanti (deceased) and appellant accused had gone to the Irrigation Department Colony to visit Dasahwa Mela. At about 3.00 a.m. all the female members who had followed the deceased and the appellant had returned back from the Mela, but the deceased Damodar Tanti and appellant accused did not return and remained in the Mela. When they did not return till 6.00 a.m. next day, the informant went for their search. In the way he learnt that dead body of a boy was lying in the Mahesha Canal. The informant went there and found the dead body of his son Damonar Tanti. There was an apparent injury on his right perital. He also found a big stone bearing blood mark lying about 20 yards east of the dead body. There was a pool of blood on the ground near the stone. A Hawai Chappal of the deceased was also lying there. The informant suspected that accused appellant had killed his son and threw the dead body in the canal and thereafter fled away. The appellant is son-in-law of the informant and the deceased was his Sala (brother-in-law). The informant alleged that accused appellant used to assault his wife Kamli Devi and even tried to burn her one day. Therefore, she had fled away from her marital place some days back and was living with the informant (at her Naihar). It is further case of the prosecution that on 28.9.1990 the accused had come to the informants house and pressed to allow him to take his wife Kamli Devi along with him but she was not ready to go along with him. In the Mela also the appellant had tried forcibly to take Kamli Devi with him but she did not go with him and returned back with her family members and other villagers leaving the deceased and the appellant in the Mela. The informant suspected that due to this annoyance the accused committed murder of the brother of his wife, a minor boy out of frustration.

(3.) The defence has not pleaded any specific case and took the plea of innocence and of false implication.