Deciding Authority: Supreme Court of India
Name of the Judges: Justice Harjit Singh Bedi, Justice J.M. Panchal
Date of Judgment: 15 April 2010
Facts of the Case: Three persons Mahavir, Jalvir, Mahesh were brought to trial for offences punishable under Sections 394/302/34 IPC for an incident that happened in the residential house of Seema Sharma P.W. 4., the first informant at about 4:15p.m. on the 24th February, 1997. A fourth person, Roopa also involved in the incident died during the trial. The trial court on a consideration of the evidence convicted the three accused and sentenced each of them to undergo imprisonment for life for the offence under Section 302 IPC and to a sentence of 10 years for the offence under Section 394 of the IPC, both the sentences to run concurrently. Three appeals thereafter were filed before the Delhi High Court which, by its judgment dated 08th March, 2007, dismissed the appeals. Jalvir, one of the accused thereupon filed Criminal Appeal which came up before this Court on 11th April, 2008. A Bench of this Court held that the only witness of the incident was P.W. 4 Seema Sharma who claimed and she knew Jalvir personally and having held as above dismissed the appeal. Mahavir also filed Criminal Appeal in the Court. This appeal was allowed with the positive finding that Seema Sharma – P.W. 4 had not been able to identify the accused as she was unaware of his identify and as the police had shown the accused to the witness which justified their refusal to participate in the identification parade and as such the only evidence against Mahavir was the identification by P.W. 4, Seema Sharma in Court and as this identification was a weak kind of evidence Mahavir was entitled to acquittal. Mahesh, the third accused subsequently filed the present appeal in this Court claiming parity with the facts in Mahavir’s case.
Judgment: The Court took up this matter for hearing and heard the learned counsel for the parties and perused the documents on record. The Court saw from the record that the role attributed to Mahesh and the evidence against him is identical with that of Mahavir who had already been acquitted by this the Court. The Court called upon Mr. P.P. Malhotra, the learned Additional Solicitor General to tell if there was any difference in the nature of the evidence with respect to the case of Mahesh and Mahavir. The learned Additional Solicitor very fairly stated that it was not possible to identify any difference with respect to the evidence against Mahavir and Mahesh.
Decision: The Court was of the view that Mahesh too was entitled to acquittal. The Court observed that it was indeed a travesty of justice that a person who had almost completed the sentence should get an acquittal after such a delay. The appeal was allowed.
By: Roopali Mohan, 2nd Year, Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, New Delhi
A COMPREHENSIVE WEBSITE FOR ALL LEGAL DEVELOPMENTS