The main legal point established in the judgment is the reliance on consistent and corroborative evidence to prove the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt.

(Mrs. Bhatkar, J.)

1. The appeal is directed against the judgment and order dated 11.4.2005 of the 2nd Adhoc Additional Sessions Judge, Kolhapur thereby convicting the appellant for the offences punishable under sections 302, 363, 364, 365 r/w section 201 of the Indian Penal Code. The maximum sentence awarded to the accused is for life imprisonment.

2. The incident of murder of one Nandkumar Maruti Patil, who was a 14 year old boy at the time of incident, had taken place on the night of 18.3.2003 at village Majgaon, Taluka Panhala, District Kolhapur. It is the case of the prosecution that the appellant was having one sided love for PW18 Nita Patil, a distant cousin of deceased Nandkumar. He had written one love letter (exhibit 39) to her and the appellant used deceased Nandkumar as a carrier of that letter. However, Nita did not reply to that letter. So the appellant used to call deceased Nandkumar often to ask him as to why he is not bringing any reply from Nita. He used to harass him on this count. On 17.3.2003 in the evening, the appellant asked one boy i.e., PW9 Rahul Krishna Patil to call Nandu. Accordingly, PW9 Rahul went and called Nandkumar from his house to the shop of the appellant. The appellant asked him to do some work and then they started walking towards a narrow lane going towards the house of the appellant. At around 10pm, as PW6 Maruti Patil, the father of the deceased, realised that Nandkumar was not at home for dinner, he started enquiry. In the vicinity, other people started searching for Nandkumar. The mother and the other family members in the house disclosed that PW 9 Rahul had come to call Nandkumar. They enquired with PW 9 Rahul and he told them that Pratap i.e., the Appellant had asked him to call Nandkumar to his shop and accordingly Rahul had taken Nandkumar to the shop of the appellant. PW 6 Maruti alongwith his relatives thereafter went to the house of the appellant and asked the appellant about Nandkumar. The appellant told them that Nandkumar had come to him. However, one white jeep full of persons had come to his shop. Those persons had come to his shop from District Beed and they kidnapped Nandkumar and those people demanded ransom of Rs.4 to 5 lacs. However, the appellant talked with them and told them that the father of Nandkumar is not very rich person and had no financial capacity to pay such a high amount and only about approximately Rs.50,000/- could be paid. They had taken Nandkumar in that jeep towards Koparde village. PW 6 Maruti alongwith other relatives and the appellant started search of his son at night. They reached near Koparde at around 3.30 am. At that time, the appellant got down from the vehicle and told Maruti that the persons who had kidnapped Nandkumar were with stenguns and revolver, so he would go ahead alone and would talk with them. As they agreed, the appellant alone proceeded. They waited for him for some time. However, he did not come back. At that time, Maruti realised that the appellant only must have kidnapped Nandkumar. Hence, he went to Panhala police station alongwith his relatives and lodged missing report on 19.3.2003 (exhibit 25). The police registered offence at C.R. No.27 of 2003 us/ 364 r/w 34 of the Indian Penal Code against the appellant accused and other persons. Police started searching for Nandkumar and on the next day i.e., 20.3.2003, the body was found outside the open place of the house of the appellant in the cow dung pit. There were clothes on his person. However, his neck was tied with one baniyan. Police drew spot panchanama (exhibit 10) in the presence of panchas i.e., PW1 Shakeel Sayyed Mokashi and inquest panchanama (exhibit 14 and 15) in the presence of PW 3 Tukaram Mane. Police sent the body of Nandkumar to Government hospital for postmortem. PW16 Dr.Jivan Shelar and Dr.Ruikar performed the postmortem examination on the dead body of Nandkumar and found that Nandkumar died because of asphyxia due to throttling.

3. Police start