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SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
S.R. PANDIAN AND Ms. M. FATHIMA BEEVI, JJ.
State of U.P., Appellant
Versus
Dr. Ravindra Prakash Mittal, Respondent
Criminal Appeal No. 124 of 1979, D/-28-4-1992.
Advocates appeared :
Mr. R.K.Singh and Mr. A.S. Pundir, Advocates, for Appellant; Mr.R.L.Kohli, Sr. Advocate and Mr. J.M. Khanna, Advocate with him, for Respondent.
(ii) Indian Penal Code, 1860 - Sections 201 and 302 - Appeal against acquittal for the offence under - Evidence purely of circumstantial nature - Motive for murder of wife Accused had married the deceased as his second wife - Strained relations - Dead body recovered was smelling kerosene - According to medical opinion death was due to strangulation and all the burn injuries were only postmortem injuries - Dead body was lying in the bed room which was in the exclusive use of husband and wife - Accused was very much present in the scene house at the time of occurrence, falsifying his plea of alibi - Overwhelming evidence to prove the guilt of the accused High Court after holding that the death was homicidal has gone wrong in recording the order of acquittal - Order of acquittal is liable to be set aside - Conviction recorded by trial court is legally sustainable. (Paras 21 to 25)
(iii) Appeal- Delay in disposal of; - Consequences - When a judgment appealed against suffers from illegality or manifest error or perversity, warranting an interference at the hands of an Appellate Court in the interest of justice on substantial and compelling reasons, the mere delay in the disposal of the appeal will never serve as a ground for non-interference Appellate Court is duty bound to set at naught the miscarriage of justice.
Held: Mr. Kohli, the learned Counsel finally made a fervent but inexorable-plea, submitting that since the occurrence took place in the year 1971 and that more- than 14 years have now elapsed since the delivery of the judgment by the High Court in October 1977, this Court be pleased not to disturb the finding of acquittal at this length of time. We gave our anxious consideration to the above submission, but we feel that this plea has to be summarily rejected when the facts and the impelling circumstances surrounding the present case cry for justice which in turn demands for awarding proper punishment according to law. In our view, if the impugned judgment of acquittal reversing the well reasoned judgment of the Trial Court, convicting the respondent is affirmed, it will be nothing but a mockery of justice and will also amount to perpetration of gross and irreparable in justice. (para 26)
Judgment
S. RATNAVEL PANDIAN, J.:- This appeal is preferred by the State of U.P. on being aggrieved by the judgment dated 1 1-101977 rendered by the High Court of Allahabad in Criminal Appeal No. 2370 of 1972 whereby the High Court has allowed the appeal, preferred by the respondent/ accused, namely, Dr. Ravindra Prakash Mittal.
2. The Respondent took his trial on the allegations that on the intervening night of 11/12th October 1971 inside his house in Mohalla Moreganj Police Station Kotwali, Saharanpur committed the murder of his wife Smt. Kamlesh; burnt the dead body by sprinkling the kerosene oil and thereby caused the evidence of the offence of murder to disappear with an intention of screening himself from legal punishment. On the above allegations, he stood charged under two heads, that is under Ss. 302 and 201, IPC.
3. Adumberated in brief, the facts of the prosecution case can be summarised as follows:
The respondent Dr. Ravindra Prakash Mittal aged about 29 years in 1971 was a private medical practitioner at Saharanpur city. He married one Smt. Mithlesh, but the marriage was dissolved by an ex parte decree in a suit for dissolution filed by the wife. The respondent thereafter married on 30th July 1971 the deceased Smt. Kamlesh, aged about 20 years who was a resident of Jagadhari. The family of the respondent consisted of his widowed mother Smt. Darshnadevi (CW 1) and three brothers, namely, Bhupendra Prakash (CW 2), Narendra Prakash and Virendra Prakash, of whom the first two brothers were married while Virendra Prakash was unmarried. It is stated that his father had died of heart attack a few months before his second marriage. They all lived under a common roof, having common mess but in separate rooms in the first floor of their house with their respective wives and children. Smt. Darshnadevi and her younger son Virendra Prakash had occupied a separate room. The respondent had his clinic in the ground floor. PW-6, by name, Mohd. Aslam alias Chini was working as a Compounder in the clinic, occasionally doing domestic work.
4. Smt. Kamlesh had two brothers, by name, Mamchand and Suresh hand (PW 2). Her elder sisters husband is one Nagesh Agarwal (PW 7). It transpires from the evidence that after her mothers death she had mostly lived in her elder sisters house till her marriage. After the marriage, she visited her parents and brother-in-law twice or thrice in quick succession and wrote some letters, two of which are marked as Exts. Ka-3 dated 18-91971 and Ka-4 dated 19-9-1971. The case of the prosecution -is that some time after the marriage the relationship between the deceased and the respondent became strained. it is said that the respondent had on more than one occasion unleashed threats to shoot and kill the deceased. While it was so, on the fateful night the respondent and the deceased after taking their dinner slept in a room which was in their exclusive possession. In the morning the dead body of the deceased Smt. Kamlesh smelling of kerosene was found by the inmates of the house inside the bed room lying within a cot frame on the floor. The respondent and his family members came out with a statement that the deceased had committed suicide by sprinkling kerosene and setting herself on fire. The respondent telephoned to the Superintendent of Police, Saharanpur (PW 3) and informed that his wife Smt. Kamlesh had committed suicide. PW-3 asked the respondent to inform the local police and told that he would himself soon reach the spot. Meanwhile, P. W. 4, Ram Kishan, a Head Constable attached to the outpost Mali Gate came to the scene place on his way to Kotwall. He on receipt of the information about the death of Kamlesh telephoned to Kotwall Police Station and informed PW-13, another Head Constable about the incident. This piece of information passed on by PW-4 was entered in the General Diary (Ext. Ka-28) at 8-00 a.m. reading that PW-4 had informed over telephone that the wife of the respondent had died of burns. Th
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