The principle of 'benefit of doubt' applies where evidence is insufficient to firmly establish guilt, leading to acquittal.

JUDGMENT :

(ASHUTOSH KUMAR, J.)

We have heard Mr. Vijay Kumar Sinha, the learned Advocate for the appellant and Mr. Abhimanyu Sharma, the learned APP for the State.

2. One Pramod Rai was killed around 14 years ago after being dragged out of his medicine shop on 02.01.2011. The FIR was lodged by his brother/Vinod Rai(PW-6) alleging that four persons on two motorcycles had come to the shop of the deceased on 02.01.2011 at about 6 O'clock in the morning and after some conversation between the deceased and co- accused Ram Prasad, on the orders of Ram Prasad, the appellant fired at the deceased. Thereafter Ram Prasad also fired which hit the deceased in his chest, as a result of which he died instantaneously. The deceased was taken to the clinic of one Doctor/ Nagendra who has not been examined at the trial where he was declared dead. Later, the dead body was brought to the house of the deceased where the FIR was lodged by PW-6. Against the other persons named in the FIR, investigation was kept pending. However, since the investigation was completed with respect to the appellant, charge-sheet was submitted against him, whereupon cognizance was taken and his case was committed to the Court of Sessions for trial.

3. The Trial Court, after having examined 11 witnesses on behalf of the prosecution, convicted the appellant under Section 302 read with 34 of the INDIAN PENAL CODE vide judgment dated 04.03.2015, passed by learned Additional Sessions Judge-II, Vaishali at Hajipur in Sessions Trial No. 322 of 2011. By order dated 09.03.2015, he has been sentenced to undergo RI for life and to pay a fine of Rs. 50,000/-.

4. Commenting adversely on the judgment of the Trial Court, the learned Advocate for the appellant has argued that the deposition of none of the witnesses including the informant (PW-6) inspire any confidence that they had actually seen the occurrence. The other part of the argument is that if the deposition of the so- called eye-witnesses are analysed, it would become very clear that if at all the occurrence had taken place, the shot fired by the appellant had not hit the deceased; rather the shot fired by Ram Prasad with whom the deceased had verbal scuffle sometimes before his death, had hit him which led to his instantaneous death.

5. It has further been argued that the deposition of Saroj Kumar @ Saroj Kumar Das (PW-1), a relatively independent person again makes it very doubtful that the others including PW-6 had seen the actual part of the assault. The doubt regarding the correctness of their statements gets further exacerbated by the narration of Lalo Devi (PW-3), the mother of the deceased who has narrated a somewhat different story than what the prosecution has relied upon.

6. Kiran Devi (PW-4), the sister-in-law of the deceased and Sarita Devi (PW-5), the wife of the deceased had not spoken to the Investigator about their being present at the time of the occurrence.

7. Thus, for all practical purposes, it has been argued that only Vinod Rai (PW-6), the elder brother of the deceased and Ajeet Kumar (PW-7), the brother-in- law of the deceased, who were present at the time of the occurrence and both of them have testified that the shot fired by Ram Prasad had hit the deceased.

8. The postmortem examination was conducted by Dr. Umeshwar Prasad Verma(PW-9) who had found only one injury on the chest of the deceased which was apparently a gun shot from close quarters and attributable to co-accused/ Ram Prasad and not the appellant.

9. The evide