The main legal point established in the judgment is the requirement to prove the act of causing miscarriage under Section 314 of the IPC, and the presumption of intent in such cases.

JUDGMENT :

1. This batch of criminal appeals is directed against the impugned judgment dated 23-12-2002 passed by the Special Judge, Rajnandgaon in Special Case No.128/20001, by which the learned Special Judge while acquitting the four appellants herein of the charge under Section 3(2)(v) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, has convicted appellant Rajesh Kumar (A-1) under Section 314 of the IPC and sentenced him to undergo rigorous imprisonment for ten years & pay fine of Rs. 10,000/-, in default, to further undergo additional rigorous imprisonment for one year, and also convicted appellants Jaswinder Singh Bhatia alias Grety (A-2), Indrajeet Singh Kakkad (A-3) & Surendera Pal Singh alias Pappi Bhatia (A-4) under Section 314 with the aid of Section 109 of the IPC and sentenced them to undergo rigorous imprisonment for ten years & pay fine of Rs. 10,000/- each, in default, to further undergo additional rigorous imprisonment for one year.

2. Since all the four criminal appeals have arisen out of one and same judgment dated 23-12-2002 passed by the Special Judge, Rajnandgaon in Special Case No.128/20001 and since common question of fact and law is involved in all the four appeals, they have been clubbed together, heard together and are being disposed of by this common judgment.

3. Case of the prosecution, in a nutshell, is that on 26-5-2001, appellant Rajesh Kumar (A-1) claiming to be a doctor caused miscarriage of Shakun Bai, widow of Madan Lal Gond, aged about 40 years, which has also resulted in her death and appellants Jaswinder Singh Bhatia alias Grety (A-2), Indrajeet Singh Kakkad (A-3) & Surendera Pal Singh alias Pappi Bhatia (A-4) along with co-accused Jasmit Singh, who was tried by the jurisdictional Juvenile Justice Court being juvenile, abetted the commission of offence under Section 314 of the IPC. Further case of the prosecution is that deceased Shakun Bai was working in the house of juvenile Jasmit Singh as a maid and she had developed relationship outside of marriage with Jasmit Singh and Jasmit Singh used to come in motorcycle to the house of deceased Shakun Bai and after staying for one-two hours, he used to leave the house, in the mean time, Jasmit Singh has taken deceased Shakun Bai, her daughters Saraswati & Sadhana and son Raju to Nagpur and meanwhile, 4-5 Sardars came to the house of the father of the deceased namely, Tularam (PW-3) and threatened him saying that his daughter has eloped with Jasmit Singh and taken him to other place. Police persons searched for Shakun Bai, but they could not find her and after 4-5 months, they were found in a hut at Nagpur and those unidentified Sardars asked her and children to board in the jeep and they came to Rajnandgaon and near Devri Dhaba, they had given Rs. 1,500/- to Tularam (PW-3) and asked him to get his daughter Shakun Bai aborted, as she was having pregnancy of five months and threatened him to kill if the incident is disclosed to anyone. Thereafter, appellant Rajesh Kumar (A-1) treated Shakun Bai by asking the other accused/appellants to go out and thereafter, she became unconscious and blood started oozing from her mouth as he has administered injection on her hand. Next day, her health became deteriorated and Rajesh Kumar (A-1) asked her father to take her to higher centre at Rajnandgaon and while escorting her to hospital at Rajnandgaon, she died on the way in between Kopedih & Tumdibod. Vehicle was seized and postmortem was conducted by a team of three doctors namely, Dr. (Smt.) Madhuri Khunte (PW-12), Dr. B.L. Kurre, Dr. V.K. Damle jointly vide Ex.P-12 in which they found that in womb there was dead foetus of 24 weeks and there was no external injury, and even in the FSL report Ex.P-26, alkaloid was found and viscera was also preserved as cause of death could not be ascertained. As per FSL report Ex.P-26, only organic substance (alkaloid) was found in Articles B & C – viscera and no poisonous chemical was fou