The quality of witnesses is crucial in proving a charge, and the prosecution must establish the common object of an unlawful assembly and the specific involvement of the accused in the commission of the offence.

A.C. Upadhyay, J.

1. Heard Mr. Mr. S. D. Choudhury, learned Counsel appearing for the appellants. Also heard Mr. A. Ghosh, learned Additional Public Prosecutor, for the respondent-State of Tripura.

2. This appeal is directed against the judgment and order dated 20.05.2002 passed by the learned Additional Sessions Judge, South Tripura, Udaipur, in Case No. ST.08 (ST/U) of 1993, whereby the accused appellants were convicted under Section 148/324/304 Part-II read with Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code (for short 'IPC') and were sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for one year under Section 148 of IPC and further sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for one year under Section 324 of IPC read with Section 149 and also to pay a fine of Rs.1,000/-, in default, to suffer further rigorous imprisonment of three months, and they were further sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for five years with a fine of Rs.5,000/-, in default, to suffer rigorous imprisonment for one year more, for commission of offence under Section 304 Part-II read with Section 149 of IPC.

3. The prosecution case arose on the basis of a first information report lodged by Shri Sankar Bhowmik on 11.01.1990 at 08-30 pm. The FIR submitted by Shri Sankar Bhowmik reveals that on 11.01.1990 at about 7-00 pm at Dhajanagar market the first informant together with Pankaj Sen, a grocery shopkeeper, and others were having discussion, then all on a sudden the accused-appellants attacked them with sharp cutting weapons, such as, Ramda, Cheni dao, Dagger, Kirich and Ballam(spear), as a result of the said attack, the victims, namely, Pankaj Sen, Aurn Chakraborty, Sankar Bhowmik, Haru Saha and Goutam Chakraborty sustained injuries and were hospitalized at Udaipur and Agartala hospitals.

4. On the basis of the above FIR, the Officer-in-charge of R.K. Pur Police Station, registered a case under Sections 148/149/307/326 of IPC and took up the investigation. However, in the mean time, one among the injured i.e. Pankaj Sen, succumbed to the injuries.

During the course of investigation the I/O recorded the testimony of the witnesses under Section161 of Cr.P.C. and also carried out the inquest of the dead body and sent the dead body for postmortem examination and on completion of investigation submitted charge sheet against the accused-appellants and others under Sections 148/149/448/324/325/302 of IPC.

5. The case being exclusively triable by the Court of Sessions, the learned Chief Judicial Magistrate, South Tripura, Udaipur committed the case to the court of learned Sessions Judge, South Tripura, Udaipur and the learned Sessions Judge, South Tripura, Udaipur transferred the case to the Court of learned Additional Sessions Judge, South Tripura, Udaipur for trial.

During trial, the learned Additional Sessions Judge, South Tripura, Udaipur framed charge under Section 148/326/302 read with Section 149 of IPC, against the accused-appellants.

On reading over and explaining the charge aforesaid, the accused appellants, pleaded not guilty to the charge and claimed to be tried.

6. The prosecution, during trial examined as many as eight witnesses to prove the charge aforesaid. All the prosecution witnesses were duly cross-examined by the learned defence counsel. On conclusion of recording statement of the prosecution witnesses, the learned Additional Sessions Judge, South Tripura, Udaipur, recorded the statement of the accused-appellants under Section313 of Cr.P.C. The accused-appellants took the stand of total denial of the accusation levelled against them. On conclusion of the trial, the learned Additional Sessions Judge, South Tripura, Udaipur convicted and sentenced the accused-appellants as aforesaid, giving rise to this appeal.

7. Learned counsel appearing for the accused-appellants has submitted that the incident occurred as far back as on 11.01.1990 and the learned trial court passed the judgment on 20.05.2002 and by this time so many years has rolled by and the delay occurred