Atmaram & Ors vs. State of M.P

Atmaram & Ors vs State of M.P, Before the Hon. Supreme Court

CITATION: Crl appeal 2003/ 2008

BENCH: Swatanter Kumar, Ranjan Gogoi

INTRODUCTION:

In this case of Atmaram & Ors vs State of M.P, the appellant (accused) who was guilty for offence under section 302 IPC was punished by the trial court and the High court also confirmed the Judgement of trial judge. Hence the appellant filed this appeal before Honorable Supreme court of India. The charges against the accused appellant were IPC section 147, 148, 149 and 302 (rioting, rioting armed with deadly weapons, murder). The evidences were against the appellant and hence the prosecution was successful in proving the case twice.

FACTS OF THE CASE

PW 1, PW 2 and the deceased had gone to the village Lod for pilgrimage and since the poojari was not there, they decided to return back to their village. When they reached near the said village, all of a sudden the accused persons arose from the fields having soybean crop and started shouting saying the deceased and his relatives had set their soybean crop a fire and therefore, they should be taught a lesson. They were armed with dangerous weapons and lathis. All these accused persons started assaulting PW1 and he was severely injured on head.  When the deceased and pw 2 tried to interfere, they too got injured.

That time another witness came for the rescue of them as called by pw 2. He took the injured witnesses and deceased in a bullock cart. Meanwhile they found a jeep coming their way and in that jeep they reached the hospital. From the hospital intimation was given to police regarding the crime. From there statement of the deceased was also taken by the police. Due to the serious condition the deceased was transferred to another hospital but he passed away on the way. There after inquest was completed and the postmortem of the deceased was done. After the registration of the offence, accused persons were arrested by the police and produced and tried by the session court.

ISSUES AND FACT OF LAW

Whether the judgement of the trial court (also confirmed by high court) is impugned?

This was the only issue before the Supreme Court on this appeal. The council was of the opinion that there are serious contradictions between the statements of PW1 and PW2. Being the eye-witnesses, such serious contradictions in their statements make the conviction of the appellants unmaintainable on that basis. For deciding this, the court quoted the decision in Asok Kumar v state of Haryana. And the court was of the opinion that, the incident had occurred on 16-5-1988 while the witnesses were examined after some time and it may not be possible for the witnesses to make statements which would be absolute reproduction of their earlier statements.

Another contention of the council appeared fort the accused was regarding the intention to kill. The council argued that it only comes under section 304 or even 326. But the statements made by prosecution witnesses clearly proved the intention of the group of accused persons to kill the deceased.

JUDGEMENT

The court found no reason to go with the contention raised by the learned council regarding the altering of offence committed from 302 to 304 or326 and hence the appeal was dismissed.