The Supreme Court has restored the conviction of two accused in a 2004 murder case, holding that the High Court had relied on conjecture and overlooked material eyewitness and medical evidence while acquitting them.
The bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran ruled that the common intention of an accused may be inferred from conduct such as restraining the victim while another person fires the fatal shot. Similarly, an exhortation to shoot may establish participation in the crime even if the person issuing the command does not personally attack the victim.
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A Bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran reversed the acquittal of accused Nagendra Singh and Dalpratap Singh and restored the conviction and sentence originally imposed upon them by the Trial Court.
However, the Court sustained the acquittal of another accused, Rajeev Lochan Singh, after finding that his presence and participation had not been established through reliable evidence. It also declined to interfere with the acquittal of the remaining accused against whom only general allegations had been made.
The prosecution case arose from an incident in which 17 persons allegedly ambushed three members of a family. One of the brothers, Virender Singh, was shot dead, while another brother, Santosh Singh, suffered injuries after being assaulted with a lathi.
According to the prosecution, the deceased, the injured complainant and some other persons were initially sitting near the family’s barn. Three of the accused allegedly came there searching for the deceased and hurled abuses and threats.
When the family members subsequently proceeded towards their home, they were allegedly surrounded by a group of 17 persons. The deceased was restrained and shot at close range, while the complainant was struck with a lathi.
A 15-year-old boy who witnessed the incident ran towards the family home and raised an alarm. Several family members thereafter reached the spot. The injured victim was taken first to a police outpost and then to a hospital, where he was declared dead.
Fourteen accused faced trial, while proceedings against three absconding accused were separated. The Trial Court convicted four persons—Ajeet Singh, Nagendra Singh, Dalpratap Singh and Rajeev Lochan Singh—and acquitted the remaining accused.
The Trial Court found that Ajeet Singh had fired the fatal shot. Nagendra Singh, along with an absconding accused, had allegedly caught hold of and restrained the deceased. Dalpratap Singh was accused of exhorting the shooter to kill the victim.
Rajeev Lochan Singh was allegedly present with a double-barrel gun and had threatened that the entire family would be eliminated. He had been summoned to face trial at a later stage under Section 319 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
In appeal, the Madhya Pradesh High Court maintained only the conviction of Ajeet Singh and acquitted the other three convicted accused. It also upheld the Trial Court’s decision acquitting the remaining persons.
The injured complainant consequently approached the Supreme Court against the acquittals.
At the outset, the Supreme Court disagreed with the High Court’s reasoning that Rajeev Lochan Singh could not be implicated merely because he was allegedly carrying a double-barrel gun but did not fire it.
The Court observed that if a person’s presence at the scene with a firearm is proved and he is shown to be part of the accused group, he may be held liable based on the group’s common intention or common object. It is not always necessary to establish that the person personally fired a shot or committed another specific physical act.
The Bench observed that the presence of a person at the scene along with others, armed with a gun, could attract liability under Section 34 or Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code if the evidence established that the person was part of the group committing the offence.
Nevertheless, the Court found that the evidence concerning Rajeev Lochan Singh’s actual presence was unreliable.
The Court noted that two reliable eyewitnesses had categorically stated that Rajeev Lochan Singh was not present at the place of occurrence. The allegation that he was carrying a gun or had threatened the victim’s family was also absent from the initial statement given to the police.
Several witnesses who had been examined before he was summoned under Section 319 CrPC had not initially mentioned his presence. They referred to him only after they were recalled and examined again following his addition as an accused.
The Supreme Court therefore held that although the High Court’s general reasoning about the absence of an overt act was legally unsustainable, there was no substantive and reliable evidence on which Rajeev Lochan Singh’s acquittal could be reversed.
His acquittal was accordingly affirmed.
The Supreme Court took a different view in the case of Nagendra Singh, who was alleged to have restrained the deceased when the fatal shot was fired.
The High Court had considered this allegation unnatural, reasoning that a person holding the victim during a close-range shooting would himself be likely to suffer injuries.
Rejecting this conclusion, the Supreme Court said that the High Court’s reasoning was merely a surmise unsupported by expert evidence.
The medical evidence showed that the bullet entered the deceased’s upper chest and remained inside his body. Thirty-four pellets, along with the plastic cap and packing material of the cartridge, were recovered from the wound.
The Court observed that this evidence ruled out the assumption that a person holding the deceased would necessarily have suffered an injury from the shot.
It added that the discrepancy over whether Nagendra Singh had dragged the victim or held him down was immaterial. In either version, the evidence disclosed his active participation in facilitating the shooting.
The initial police statement as well as the eyewitness testimony had consistently attributed this role to him. His common intention was therefore evident from his act of restraining the deceased while the fatal shot was fired.
The Supreme Court also restored the conviction of Dalpratap Singh, who was accused of exhorting Ajeet Singh to fire at the deceased.
The Bench noted that this allegation did not emerge for the first time during the trial. The injured complainant had attributed the exhortation to Dalpratap Singh in his earliest statement and repeated it during his testimony before the Trial Court.
The Court found that his common intention was discernible from the exhortation. Even if the requirements of Section 149 were not attracted, his liability could be established with the aid of Section 34 IPC.
The High Court had expressed doubt about whether the person issuing the command could have been identified during the nighttime incident. The Supreme Court, however, noted evidence that an electric light from a nearby temple illuminated the place of occurrence.
Although a defence witness claimed that the temple did not have an electricity connection, he admitted that houses in the locality were electrified. The Court further observed that the accused were already known to the witnesses and could also have been identified by their voices.
The Court accepted the presence of the injured complainant at the scene, noting that his injuries were consistent with his account of having been assaulted with a lathi.
The doctor had recorded injuries on his head, left eyebrow, hand and lumbar region, along with redness in the eye. Although the injuries were simple, they materially corroborated his version of the incident.
The defence had attempted to dispute his presence by relying on employment records showing that he had been marked on duty. The Supreme Court noted that he was a daily-wage worker and formal leave applications were not required.
Significantly, the attendance record also showed him on duty the day after his brother’s death, when he would plainly have been absent. The Court said that although the practice of marking an absent daily-wage worker as present deserved to be deprecated, such a record could not outweigh the medical evidence proving his presence at the crime scene.
The accused argued that several prosecution witnesses were related to the deceased and were therefore interested witnesses. Some independent witnesses had also turned hostile.
The Supreme Court reiterated that a related witness cannot automatically be treated as an interested or unreliable witness. The real question is whether the person’s presence at the scene was natural and whether the testimony was credible.
Since the attack occurred close to the family home, the presence of some relatives was natural. However, after examining the depositions, the Court expressed reservations about portions of the testimony given by certain family members because of omissions and inconsistencies in their earlier police statements.
The Bench ultimately relied principally upon the evidence of the injured complainant and two other witnesses, read with the medical evidence.
The defence also relied upon a “Dehati Merg Intimation,” which did not contain the names of all 17 accused.
The Supreme Court held that the omission was inconsequential. The document was only a brief death intimation recorded on the morning following the occurrence.
The injured complainant had already given a detailed statement at the police outpost at 11 pm on the night of the incident, approximately three hours after the shooting. That statement named all 17 persons and described the specific roles attributed to the principal accused.
The Court therefore found no inconsistency between the two documents.
While accepting the evidence against the shooter, Nagendra Singh and Dalpratap Singh, the Supreme Court declined to convict all the persons alleged to have been part of the group.
The Bench observed that the prosecution witnesses had named several persons without describing their individual roles. Since there was longstanding enmity between the two sides, the possibility that some persons had been falsely implicated could not be completely ruled out.
The Court reiterated that the principle of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus—false in one thing, false in everything—does not apply in India. Courts must separate the reliable part of the evidence from exaggerations or false additions.
The deliberate implication of some persons without sufficient basis would not require the court to discard those portions of the testimony that were otherwise credible and independently corroborated.
At the same time, the mere naming of a person, without reliable evidence establishing his presence or participation in the unlawful assembly, could not justify conviction on the basis of common intention or common object.
The Supreme Court reversed the High Court’s acquittal of Nagendra Singh and Dalpratap Singh. Their Trial Court conviction and sentence were restored.
The acquittal of Rajeev Lochan Singh was sustained because of the absence of substantive and reliable evidence against him. The Court also dismissed the appeal concerning the other accused, finding that their participation in the unlawful assembly had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Nagendra Singh and Dalpratap Singh were granted two weeks to surrender before the Sessions Court to serve their sentences. The Sessions Court was directed to take appropriate steps to apprehend them if they failed to surrender within the stipulated period.
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