Prashant Kumar Mishra, J.

1. Heard.

2. This appeal by the accused/appellant challenging his conviction under Sections, 302, 364 and 201 of IPC, raises a pertinent question as to whether the conviction for kidnapping, murder and concealment of evidence, can be sustained only on the basis of positive report of the Handwriting Expert.

3. The accused was tried for the subject offences on the allegation that at about 10 AM on 15.02.2003, he accompanied the deceased's mother from village Sahaspur to village Ghatia and reached there in nearly 3 hours. He came back within next 3 hours and reached village Sahaspur at about 4:00 p.m. He along with PW-12 Taimanlal and deceased Shubham, aged 8 years, were watching TV shows in the house of the deceased. It is said, from this place, the appellant kidnapped the deceased on a bicycle. In the morning of 22.02.2003, Mansaram (father of PW-3 Ajaykumar) was informed by the villagers that a dead body is floating in the well belonging to Madan Sahu at a distance of about 1 km from his house on Sahaspur-Rajpur road. Mansaram went towards the well and identified the dead body through the clothes worn by the deceased.

4. The Postmortem was conducted by