The conviction was overturned due to the prosecution's failure to prove the guilt of the appellants beyond reasonable doubt, particularly highlighting the unreliable testimony of the child witness.

JUDGMENT :

Sanjay Kumar Jaiswal, J

(1) Regard being had to the similitude of the question of facts and law involved and being arising out of a common impugned judgment dt. 21.10.2014, on the joint request of learned counsel for the parties, both these criminal appeals are clubbed together, heard together and being disposed of by this common judgment.

(2) Invoking criminal appellate jurisdiction of this Court, two accused/appellants herein, namely, Virup Pal @ Veeru (A-1) and Smt. Monika Bareth (A-3) have preferred CRA-1324-2014 & CRA- 90-2015 under Section 374(2) of Cr.P.C. respectively, calling in question the legality, validity and correctness of impugned judgment of conviction and order of sentence dt. 21.10.2014, passed in Sessions Trial No.93/2013 (Virup Pal @ Veeru and others v. State of Chhattisgarh) by the 2^nd Addl. Sessions Judge, Korba (CG), whereby they both have been convicted and sentenced as under:

[Both the sentences are directed to run concurrently]

(3) The case of the prosecution, in short, is that on 17.06.2013, the two accused/appellants herein alongwith another co-accused (now dead) firstly shared common intention with each other and, in furtherance of their of, assaulted Mukesh Kumar Bareth (herein after referred to as the “deceased”) by means of bricks and tiles and caused his murder and, further, in order to screen themselves from prosecution, put the dead-body of the deceased in gunny bag and threw into Bade canal and, thereby, said to have committed the aforesaid offence.

(4) It is further case of the prosecution that when the matter was reported to the police by Madan Das mahant (PW-02), dehati merg was registered vide Ex.P/34. Dead-body of the deceased was identified by Mohan Lal (PW-03) [brother of the deceased] vide identification panchnama (Ex.P/17). Merg intimation (Ex.P/35) and FIR (Ex.P/37) were also registered and wheels of investigation started running, in which, summons under Section 175 of CrPC were sent vide Ex.P/15 and inquest proceedings were conducted vide Ex.P/16. Spot map was also prepared vide Ex.P/31. The dead-body of the deceased was sent for postmortem examination, which was conducted by Dr. Deepak Singh Raj (PW-05) and, as per PM report (Ex.P/01), it has been opined that cause of death is head injury consist with compressive force applied over neck resulting in asphyxia and nature of death is homicidal in nature. The appellants-accused were arrested and their memorandum statements were recorded vide Ex.P/02 & Ex.P/04 respectively. Pursuant to the memorandum statements of the appellant- Virup Pal @ Veeru (A-1) tiles, mobile phone and scooter were seized vide Ex.P/05 & Ex.P/06, whereas, from appellant- Monika Bareth (A-3), tiles looks like brick were seized vide Ex.P/08. Thereafter, the seized articles were sent for chemical examination, but no FSL report has been brought on record for the reasons best known to the prosecution. After statements of witnesses were recorded and due investigation, the police filed charge-sheet against the a