1. These appeals are directed against the judgment dated 25th March 2009 passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge (‘ASJ‘) convicting the Appellants for the offences under Sections 395/397 of IPC and Section 27 of the Arms Act, 1959 and the order on sentence of the same date convicting each of them to undergo rigorous imprisonment (‘RI‘) for seven years for the offences under Sections 395/397 and RI for three years along with a fine of Rs. 1,000 and in default, to undergo simple imprisonment (‘SI‘) for one month for the offence under Section 27 of the Arms Act.

2. The case of the prosecution is that Kailash Sharma (PW-1) was the owner of a factory, manufacturing aluminium wires located at Haiderpur, New Delhi. Among the labourers working for him were, Sanjay Kumar (PW-8), Tulsi Ram (PW-9), Dalip Paswan (PW-10), Manchit Paswan (PW-11) and Baba Paswan (PW-12). The said labourers used to sleep in the factory. On 23rd August 2004, Kailash Sharma along with his brother, Sunder Lal (PW-2) had gone for a surprise inspection to the factory at around 12 midnight or 12:15 am. They noticed two persons removing aluminium wires from the factory. They tried to apprehend the two