Point of Law: Section 120B of the IPC provides as Punishment of criminal conspiracy: Whoever is a party to a criminal conspiracy to commit an offence punishable with death, imprisonment for life or rigorous imprisonment for a term of two years or upwards.

JUDGMENT :

Sanjay K. Agrawal, J.

1. Since all the five criminal appeals have arisen out of one and same impugned judgment dated 1-9-2012 passed by the 2nd Additional Sessions Judge, Baloda Bazaar in Sessions Trial No.49/2012 and since common question of fact and law is involved in all the five appeals, they have been clubbed together, heard together and are being disposed of by this common judgment.

2. These five criminal appeals have been preferred by the accused/appellants (A-1 to A-5) under Section 374(2) of the CrPC against the impugned judgment convicting them for the offence punishable under Section 302 read with Section 120B of the IPC and sentencing them to undergo imprisonment for life with fine of Rs.1,000/- each, in default, to further undergo imprisonment for six months. Appellants Kishore @ Kishan & Indrapal @ Bhakhlu have also been convicted for offences punishable under Sections 25(1B)(b) & 27(1) of the Arms Act and sentenced to undergo imprisonment for two years with fine of Rs. 200/- each, in default to further undergo imprisonment for six months and to undergo imprisonment for five years with fine of Rs. 500/- each, in default, to further undergo imprisonment for six months, respectively.

3. Sole appellant in Cr.A.No.872/2012 namely Kishore @ Kishan (A-1), sole appellant in Cr.A.No.1102/2012 namely Indrapal @ Bhakhlu (A-2), sole appellant in Cr.A.No.1004/2012 namely Ajay @ Khorbahra (A-3), sole appellant in Cr.A.No.779/2012 namely Geetaram @ Rajkumar (A-4) and two appellants in Cr.A. No.863/2012 namely Devram (A-5) & Sukwara Bai (A-6) have assailed their conviction for offences under Section 302 read with Section 120B of the IPC and Sections 25(1B)(b) & 27(1) of the Arms Act.

4. It is admitted position on record that deceased Santosh Tandan was son of Devram (A-5) out of his wedlock with his second wife Sonia Bai and step son of Sukwara Bai (A-6). It is the case of the prosecution that Devram (A-5) retired from SECL and has received Rs. 7 lakhs as pensionary benefits out of which deceased Santosh Tandan was expecting some money for starting some business which Devram (A-5) & Sukwara Bai (A-6) were not willing to give. Further, it is the allegation that despite unwillingness of Devram (A-5), the deceased came to the house of Devram (A-5) & Sukwara Bai (A-6) and started residing in some portion of it for which in order to remove him from there and to get rid of him, A-5 & A-6 conspired with Ajay (A-3) & Geetaram (A-4) and hired Kishore (A-1) & Indrapal (A-2) to murder Santosh Tandan for an amount of Rs. 20,000/- and in furtherance of their conspiracy, on 13-8-2010 between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., A-1 to A-4 assaulted Santosh Tandan by knife & khukhri in the field of Kapil Chauhan located in between Village Manahi and Village Nagarda by which he suffered injuries and died. Ramnath (PW-1) appeared in Police Station Bilaigarh and registered morgue intimation Ex.P-1 and informed about the dead body of unknown person lying in the outskirts of Village Nagarda pursuant to which Abhinav Kant Singh (PW-15) reached to the spot along with police party and dead body was identified to be of Santosh Tandan vide identification panchnama Ex.P-12. Thereafter, inquest was conducted vide Ex.P-4 and dead body was recommended by the panchas to be sent for postmortem to ascertain cause of death and accordingly, it was sent for postmortem. Meanwhile, on same day, dehati nalishi was registered vide Ex.P-23 and Hero Honda CD Delux motorcycle along with its attached articles was seized from the spot vide Ex.P-21 and other articles were also seized vide Exs.P-6 & P-7.

Thereafter, FIR was registered vide Ex.P-25 in the police station, Meanwhile, postmortem was conducted by Dr. Om Prakash Aditya (PW-4) vide his postmortem report Ex.P-8 and according to the doctor conducting postmortem, cause of death was shock due to haemorrhage as a result of multiple severe injuries to vital organs and death was homicidal in nature. Thereafter, memorandum statement