Om Prakash

murder case =version of P.W.3, the so-called eye-witness, that when the High Court chose to disbelieve his version, insofar as it related to the other three accused on the same reasoning, it ought to have acquitted the appellant as well.= when the presence of P.W.3 at the place of happening of the occurrence was thus fully established with the support of P.W.4, as rightly concluded by the trial Court, as well as, the High Court, the only other question was whether the rest of the statement made by P.W.3 merited any acceptance. In that respect, we find that the High Court made a close scrutiny of the version of P.W.3 and has found that he was a totally independent witness and he had no axe to grind against the appellant. In fact, his statement that he could not identify the other accused, as rightly held by the Division Bench of the High Court, was a very fair statement. When he also belonged to the same village, there was no reason for him to implicate the appellant alone. Therefore, the conclusion of the High Court that such a fair statement made by the witness, namely, P.W.3 cannot be used to totally erase his version, was perfectly justified. Further, because he did not make any attempt to go to rescue of the deceased cannot be put against the witness, inasmuch as when four persons were assaulting the deceased with dangerous weapons that too in the night hour in the present day set up, one cannot expect an unarmed person to get himself entangled and suffer unnecessary harm to himself. Moreover, the occurrence took place late in the light at around 9 pm and, therefore, prudence might have dawned upon him not to fall a cheap prey at the hands of such criminals who were already assaulting a person with a dagger and other weapons. Equally his conduct in having come back to the place of occurrence in the early morning at around 7.30 am along with P.W.4 only shows his earnestness in disclosing what he witnessed on the previous night to the police. The recoveries made at the instance of the appellants also fully supported the case of the prosecution.- We say so, since we are convinced that the version of P.W.3 was wholly reliable and there was no reason to doubt his version in order to apply the principles set out in the above referred decisions. 20. We, therefore, do not find any merit in this appeal. The appeal fails and the same is dismissed.

Page 1 Reportable IN THE SUPREME COURT OF INDIA CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION CRIMINAL APPEAL NO.2356 OF 2009 Palwinder Singh ….Appellant VERSUS State of Punjab ….Respondent J U D G M E N T Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla, J. 1. This appeal is directed against the judgment of the Division Bench of Punjab & Haryana High Court … Continue reading →