The main legal point established in the judgment is the application of the legal principles of culpable homicide and common intention under the IPC.

Kailash Gambhir, J.

1. By this appeal filed under section 374 of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (hereinafter referred to as Cr. P.C.), the appellants seek to challenge the impugned judgment dated 19.11.1999 and order on sentence dated 22.11.1999, whereby the appellants herein were convicted for committing offences punishable under Section 302/452/506/34 Indian Penal Code, 1860 ( hereinafter referred to as ‘IPC’) and were sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life and to pay a fine of Rs. 1000 each and in case of default, to undergo simple imprisonment for a period of one month, for an offence committed u/s 302 IPC. The appellants were further sentenced to undergo RI for one year and pay fine of Rs. 500/- for offence under section 452 read with section 34 IPC, in default thereof to undergo SI for 15 days and were also ordered to undergo RI for one month for offence under section 506 read with section 34 IPC.

2. The facts germane to the case of the prosecution are:

The deceased, Anand Kishore was residing with his wife Somwati and other family members at WZ-104C, Harijan Colony, Tilak Vihar and was occupying a portion of the first floor of the house. His brother, Girdhari Lal occupied the other portion of the first floor where he was residing with his wife, Rajbala, son Kapil Kishore and other family members. Accused Nanak Chand was the father, and accused Vidya Sagar, Vinod and Suresh were the brothers of Somwati. Accused Kamal Kishore was also related to her. A case was registered by the police at PS Tilak Nagar on the statement of Kapil Kishore wherein he had alleged that quarrels were a common occurrence between Somwati and the deceased on family matters. His parents had interfered and tried to pacify them on many occasions. At times the father in law and brother in law of the deceased used to intervene and threaten to kill him as alleged. On the day of the incident, i.e. 25.07.1997, when the complainant returned home at about 2 PM, his mother Rajbala informed him that a quarrel had taken place between Somwati and the deceased and that she had informed Vinod (brother of Somwati) to make Somwati understand. He had further alleged that on the same day at about 4:20 PM, the accused persons came and barged into the room where the deceased was sleeping, they abused him and gave him beatings including fist blows. Accused Nanak Chand exhorted the other accused persons to put an end to the daily disputes once and for all. Thereafter, accused Suresh held the deceased from his left arm while accused Vinod held him from his right arm. Accused Nanak Chand held him by his hair and accused Kamal Kishore held him by his legs while accused Vidya Sagar inflicted a knife blow on the left side of his chest. The deceased started bleeding profusely. The complainant and his cousin Narender tried to intervene and his mother Rajbala raised an alarm, hearing which the accused fled away threatening to kill them if they dared to intervene. The Investigation Officer (hereafter referred to as the “IO”) seized the blood stained bed sheet and mattress and also got the scene of incident photographed. The accused persons were apprehended from Keshav Puram Bus stop, at around 9:30PM on the basis of secret information.

3. To prove its case the prosecution examined as many as 22 witnesses. After the completion of the prosecution evidence, statement of the accused persons were recorded under Section 313 of the Cr. P.C. wherein the entire incriminating evidence was put to them, to which they pleaded innocence and false implication and voluntarily submitted that no recovery was made from them. The defense examined two witnesses, i.e. DW1- Rattan Chand and DW-2 Sukhi Ram.

4. Learned Additional Sessions Judge after having analyzed the evidence adduced by the prosecution witnesses, the MLC report on record and the post-mortem report marked as Exhibit PW 17/A concluded that homicidal death of the deceased Anand Kishore was caused by the accused pers