SEIKH AHMAD Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The solitary appellant was charged with committing the murder of a child, namely, Gulshan who was aged about one and half months on the day of occurrence, by the learned Additional Sessions Judge-cum-Fast Track Court-ll, Sitamarhi and was put on trial in Sessions Trial No.162 of 2000 by judgment dated 24.02.2007. The appellant was held guilty of committing the offence under Section 304 part-ll IPC and was directed to suffer rigorous imprisonment for six years. The appellant has appealed to this Court to challenge the judgment of conviction.

(2.) The prosecution case is contained in the fardbeyan (Ext-2/1) of Md.Saim(P.W.5) who was the father of the child. It was stated by P.W.5 that there was some dispute for a particular property, like, the residential house which was also being claimed by the appellant as the ancestral property. The informant had allegedly put on a lock at the doors of one room and the appellant came with a hammer and chisel and started cutting the lock that was objected to by the wife of the informant, namely, P.W.3 Mokima Khatoon. She had, undisputedly, the child in her lap. As soon as she raised the objection, it is alleged, the appellant attempted a hammer blow upon the lady P.W.3, but that accidentally fell on the child in the lap of the mother. The child fell on the ground and died. The appellant is said, thereafter, to have caught the lady P.W.3 by her hairs so as to drag her around and beat her up. It is stated that the baby had died and the mother P.W.3 cried that her baby had been killed. In the meantime, the appellant had cut and removed the lock put up on the doors of the house and went back.

(3.) It was further stated that the appellant came to the house of the informant at about 9 P.M. and started pelting stones at his house and it continued till 12 P.M. In spite of raising the alarm the informant could not get any assistance from any one as no one turned up and as such he approached the Superintendent of Police, Sitamarhi at his residence on 06.11.1999 in the morning, but by that time the baby had died. On the basis of Ext-1, the FIR of the case was drawn up and the investigation was under taken by S.I. Sushil Kumar Gupta(P.W.7) who stated that he inspected the place of occurrence and recorded the statements of witnesses as also sent the dead body of the child for postmortem examination and finding the material sufficient sent up the solitary appellant for his trial.