IMPORTANT POINTS
Unreliable and unbelievable evidence cannot be relied upon to support guilt of an accused.
Unreliable and unbelievable evidence of chance witnesses cannot be relied upon to support guilt of an accused.
Highly exaggerative and therefore unreliable evidence cannot be relied upon to support guilt of an accused.
Evidence contradictory in material aspects cannot be relied upon to support guilt of an accused.
Evidence of witnesses closely related to deceased contradicting one another cannot be relied upon.
High Court perfunctorily holding witnesses to be eye witnesses and their evidence believable, trustworthy and natural, not proper.
Conviction of 3 accused and acquittal of 26 accused on the basis of same witnesses and same evidence is not proper.

JUDGMENT

Fakkir Mohamed Ibrahim Kalifulla, J.

1. This appeal, at the instance of accused Nos.1 to 3 is directed against the judgment of the Division Bench of the High Court of Karnataka at Bangalore in Criminal Appeal No.787 of 2007 dated 01.03.2012 by which conviction and sentence imposed on the Appellants for offences under Sections 143, 147, 148, 448 and 302, Indian Penal Code (IPC) read with Section 149 of IPC was confirmed.

2. The case of the prosecution was that the accused along with 40 others formed themselves into an unlawful assembly with the common object of committing murder of the complainant Mahadeva (PW-11) and the deceased Lingaraju apart from committing other offences. It was alleged that with the above common object of such assembly, they also hatched a criminal conspiracy prior to 3 p.m. on 13.02.1999 and all the accused went to the shop of the deceased and the complainant, committed trespass armed with deadly weapons like swords, choppers, longs, clubs etc., with an intention to kill them and intentionally committed the murder of deceased Lingaraju by assaulting him all over his body with the use of deadly weapons possessed by them and that when the deceased Lingaraju in his injured condition tried to escape and run away towards the police station, he was further assaulted by the accused by chasing him down. The deceased Lingaraju ultimately fell down with multiple severe injuries in front of Surya Prabha Hardware shop. Thereafter, the accused alleged to have run away from the scene with the weapons in different vehicles in different directions. When the victim Lingaraju was immediately shifted to the Government Hospital, he was declared dead on examination by the doctors.

3. Exhibit P-18 was the complaint which was lodged at 3.30 pm, while the occurrence was stated to have happened at 3 p.m. on 13.02.1999. Altogether 44 accused were proceeded against. In the course of trial, A-8 died. The trial Court convicted A-1, A-2, A-3, A-4, A-5 and A-29 and rest of the accused were all acquitted. The Criminal Appeal No.787 of 2007 was preferred by the present Appellants along with A-4, A-5 and A-29 while Criminal Appeal No.1775 of 2007 was preferred by the State of Karnataka. By the impugned judgment, the Division Bench of the High Court, while confirming the conviction and sentence imposed on the Appellants, allowed the appeal preferred by A-4, A-5 and A-29 and acquitted them of all the charges. As many as 49 witnesses were examined on the side of the prosecution.

4. We heard Mr. Altaf Ahmad, learned Senior Counsel for the Appellants and Mr. Parikshit Angadi, learned counsel for the Respondent. Mr. Altaf Ahmad, learned Senior Counsel in his submissions stated that of the 49 witnesses, reliance was mainly placed upon PWs-11, 14, 15, 19, 24, 30, 42, 43 and 44 out of whom many turned hostile and quite a number of them were found to be chance witnesses and unreliable. PW-11 was relied upon by the prosecution as star witness who was the complainant himself and Exhibit P-18-complaint was lodged by him. Apart from PW-11, PWs19, 30 and 32 were also claimed to be eye-witnesses. The learned Senior Counsel also submitted that no test identification parade was held. According to him, though PW-11 was claimed to be an eyewitness along with PWs-19, 30 and 32, there were serious deficiencies in their evidence and, therefore, they cannot be accepted to have witnessed the occurrence even going by what they have deposed before the Court. The learned Senior Counsel also contended that going by the complaint Exhibit P-18, there were serious contradictions as compared to the oral evidence led before the trial Court and, therefore, the conviction of the Appellants cannot be sustained. The learned Senior Counsel contended that whatever reason which weighed with the Courts below for the acquittal of the other accused equally applied to the Appellants and consequently, they are also entitled for acquittal on the very same reasoning.

5. The