Allahabad High Court
Smt. Ravi vs State Of U.P. & Others on 22 May, 2012
Bench: Dharnidhar Jha, Ramesh Sinha
HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT ALLAHABAD
Case :- CRIMINAL MISC. APPLICATION DEFECTIVE U/S 372 CR.P.C (LEAVE TO APPEAL) No. - 2 of 2012
Petitioner :- Smt. Ravi
Respondent :- State Of U.P. & Others
Petitioner Counsel :- Mayank Bhushan
Respondent Counsel :- Govt. Advocate
AND
Case :- GOVERNMENT APPEAL No. - 5450 of 2010
Petitioner :- State Of U.P.
Respondent :- Ram Kumar Singh And Others
Petitioner Counsel :- G.A.
Hon'ble Dharnidhar Jha,J.
Hon'ble Ramesh Sinha,J.
Heard.
We dispense with the notices to be given to respondent no.3.
We accept that the explanation given is sufficient to condone the delay of 598 days in filing the appeal by the informant. The State appeal, which is connected with the present appeal, has been filed in time.
We have heard the learned counsel for the informant-appellant and also Sri M.C. Joshi, learned AGA in support of the Government Appeal.
The case was under Section 302 IPC and was decided by the Additional Sessions Judge, Court No. 5, Kanpur Nagar in S.T. NO.776 of 2003. The allegation was that respondent no.3 Priti Singh, who was the wife of deceased Rajesh Singh, brought Rajesh Singh to Kanpur in spite of the fact that he was not ready to come. At about 8:00-8:30 p.m. on 3.10.2001, a telephonic call from the deceased Rajesh Singh was received by the informant, who was weeping on account of the accused persons having picked up a quarrel with him and, as such, the informant suggested to him to run away from there. Rajesh Singh informed that he was surrounded by many persons including R.K. Singh and Guddu who were threatening him. The telephone connection thereafter was disconnected.
The informant stated that in between 12:00-12:30 hours, she again received a call from some unknown person informing that her son Rajesh Singh had been killed and the unknown caller again disconnected the telephone.
The case of the prosecution was that many calls were made by giving ring to telephone no. 359491 which was installed in the house of the accused persons , but no one picked up the phone, as such no information was given and if the phone was picked up, the responding person would snap the call by whispering that it was a wrong number.
The informant and her husband, thereafter, appears to have contacted telephonically Police Station Chakeri on 4.10.2001 and were confirmed that her son had died and the dead body had been sent for post mortem examination to UHM Hospital.
The motive for the occurrence, as alleged by the informant was that since after the marriage of respondent no.3, her son was under pressure to live with the parents of Priti Singh, at Shyampur, Kanpur. He was also threatened to resign his employment in Indian Railways so that he could live in the house of the accused persons located at Shyampur locality of Kanpur. But the deceased was not yielding to the pressures nor was being cowed down by the threats, and that it ultimately resulted in the deceased being killed.
The case was investigated into and charge-sheet was submitted resulting into the same being tried by the court of sessions. Considering the aspect of the case that the deceased had no injury on his person, the doctor who held post mortem examination on the dead body of Rajesh Singh was specifically queried, as may appear from the prosecution evidence at Page 9 of the judgment to which he had replied that he did not find any external or internal injury in spite of having examined the dead body with due care and caution. No apparent cause of death could be found by P.W. 6 Dr. P.K. Mathur which resulted in the preservation of some part of viscera of the deceased, where-after it was sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory and ultimately, the report, which was received from there, pointed out that the death was on account of poisoning by ethyl alcohol. This is recorded by the learned trial Judge at Page 19 of the judgment. However, the parents of the deceased, specially, his mother was alleging some foul play at the hands of the accused, specially in the light of finding of some injuries on the dead body.
We have already reverted to the evidence of P.W.6 Dr. P.K. Mathur who in spite of having applied due care and caution, had failed to find out any external or internal injury and stated that injuries on dead body may be due to incisions done during post mortem examination.
As regards the motive, evidence was sufficiently indicative of the fact that the deceased was a well paid employee of the Indian Railways and was getting a salary of Rs.6000/- in the year 2001. So far as the story that he was under pressure and was threatened by the parents of Priti Singh to live as Ghar Jamai in the house of the informant, that story also appears doubtful in view of the admission, which appears from the evidence of the witnesses and which has been recorded by the learned trial Judge at page 12 of the judgment. The learned trial Judge was considering the evidence of the father of the deceased. It has been recorded by the learned trial judge that Priti Singh had other brothers and sisters, then what was the special reason for Priti Singh to ask the deceased Rajesh Singh also to live with them. On the other hand, the evidence was also there that relationship between Priti Singh and the deceased was cordial and Priti Singh had immense respect for her husband as once when the father and brother of Priti Singh went to her matrimonial house for bringing her back on Raksha Bandhan day, she refused to go because her husband was not present in the house at that time and as she did not think it proper to go in absence of her husband.
We find from the evidence of P.W.1 which appears at page 12 that another motive was also suggested by the prosecution that Priti Singh was a lady of bad character and information about her bad character had been passed on to the deceased by some unknown person, but, the court below has, after discussing the evidence in that behalf, rightly rejected the existence of that motive.
Admittedly, the deceased was in the habit of taking liquor and was a drunkard and evidence has been led to suggest that he used to take liquor heavily. Methyl alcohol is poisonous and, therefore, there might be some possibility that he had taken methyl alcohol on some misconception or misunderstanding or may be not knowing its poisonous effect which might have caused his death.
We have gone through the prosecution evidence. As regards the telephonic connection, being cut off at the house of the informant, because of the reasons which have been mentioned by the trial judge, in discussion of evidence on that behalf, at page 15 of the judgment, leaves no room for us to go into the other details of the discussion. We find that the judgment of acquittal, which was passed by the trial judge, does not suffer from any impropriety and perversity, and the view taken by the learned trial judge cannot be said to be bad on facts.
As such, we dismiss the two appeals, one filed by the informant and the other filed by the State.
22.5.2012
V.Sri/-
