Judgment

Arijit Pasayat, J.—Leave granted.

2. Appellants call in question legality of the judgment rendered by a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court upholding convic­tion of the appellants (hereinafter referred to as the ‘accused’) under Sections 323, 325 and 326 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (in short the ‘IPC’) and sentence as imposed by the trial Court which had sentenced each to undergo rigorous imprisonment for three months, two years and seven years respectively with separate fines for each of the alleged offences with default stipulations.

3. Background facts leading to the trial of the accused appellants are as follows :

The case was registered on the basis of information lodged by Piara Singh (PW-6), which was recorded on 10.11.1989 at about 2.00 a.m. According to the informant, he and his son Sham Singh’s wife Sito (PW-7) were sitting in the courtyard of the house of Sham Singh (hereinaf­ter referred to as the ‘deceased’). It was about 11.00 a.m. on 9.11.1989 when deceased was coming from the village after purchasing vegetables. When he reached near the house of Janta Singh, son of Dharam Singh, Harbans Kaur (A-1) armed with a Gandasi and