The main legal point established in the judgment is the reliance on trustworthy and reliable direct eye witness accounts, supported by medical evidence, to establish the guilt of the accused.

JUDGMENT :

ABHAY S. WAGHWASE, J.

1. This appeal takes exception to the judgment and order of conviction passed by learned Sessions Judge, Ahmednagar dated 12-06-2017 in Sessions Case No.148 of 2015 by which present appellants are held guilty for offence under Sections 302 and 324 read with 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and thereby sentenced to suffer imprisonment for life and simple imprisonment for six months for each of the offences respectively.

Story of Prosecution unfolded is as under :

2. Deceased Dattatraya was working as Ward Boy in Bagirathi Hospital, Ahmednagar whereas his parents stayed at Aathawad, Taluka and District Ahmednagar and his married sisters stayed at Ahmednagar. He used to visit his parents on holidays. Accused were their neighbours. There was love affair between daughter of accused no.2 and deceased Dattatraya. In a marriage of one of the brothers of accused no.1 namely Santosh, Deceased Dattatraya had declared his intention to perform marriage with Sangita. Accused were upset since then and two months prior to the incident in question, they had visited house of informant i.e. father of deceased Dattatraya and had issued threats to kill Dattatraya if he performs marriage with Sangita. Since then they were on inimical terms.

According to prosecution, on 12-03-2015 deceased Dattatraya had come for a Pooja and therefore, all relatives including married sisters of deceased Dattatraya were called and so they had all gathered. At around 07:00 p.m. deceased Dattatraya returned home after he had been to call some ladies for Pooja programme. At that time, while deceased was parking his motorcycle, accused no.1 initially hit him on head by means of a torch and so he raised shouts, which invited attention of his family members, who came out of the house and they saw accused nos.2 to 4 assaulting Dattatraya. Accused no.2 caught-hold of Dattatraya and accused no.1 stabbed with knife on the back of Dattatraya as a result of which he collapsed. When informant and other family members went to his rescue, it is their version that they were also beaten by rafters. Deceased was shifted to Civil Hospital at Ahmednagar but on examination he was declared dead and therefore, his father PW2 Balasaheb set law into motion by visiting Nagar Taluka Police Station vide report/FIR Exh.43.

3. The above crime was registered by PW15 Wagh, Police Head Constable and thereafter, investigation was carried out by PW17 Adhaoo (PSI) and PW18 Chavan (API) at respective times and on completion of the same, accused persons came to be chargesheeted.

4. Case being exclusively triable by Court of Sessions, trial was conducted by learned Sessions Judge, who permitted prosecution to adduce their evidence. Case of prosecution is rested on oral evidence of 18 witnesses and reliance was also placed on several documentary evidence like FIR, various panchanamas, post mortem report, recovery memorandum and panchanamas etc.

Learned Sessions Judge offered opportunity to the accused to answer incriminating material by posing questions under Section 313 of the Cr.P.C. Defence denied to lead any evidence and therefore, on appreciating oral and documentary evidence and on hearing both the sides, learned Sessions Judge held accused guilty as mentioned in operative part of the impugned judgment.

The above judgment and order of conviction is assailed before us on various grounds mentioned in appeal memo.

SUBMISSIONS

On behalf of Appellants :

5. Taking exception to the story of prosecution, Mr. Sapkal, learned Senior Counsel took us through entire evidence adduced by prosecution i.e. substantive evidence of all the witnesses. He criticized the prosecution case by submitting that case has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt as required by law. He pointed out that the genesis of crime is not forthcoming. Moreover, complainant party and accused party being in cross terms, possibility of false implication cannot be ruled out. He vehemently submitted that it is doubtful whe