Hon’ble Yatindra Singh, J.—Children are innocent, unaware of the dangers lurking ahead they require care and protection rather than the sad fate of the boy, as in this case : this appeal is a stark reminder of it.

THE FACTS

2. Manish Joshi (the Informant) is computer operator working in Ghaziabad. His son Dhananjay Joshi (the Deceased) was fair, 135 cm tall and was aged about 8 years. He used to learn Judo. On 6.9.2004 at 5:30 pm, he had gone to the park in sector-3, block-11 for his Judo-Karate class but never came back. His father, the Informant lodged a report with the police station Sahibabad District Ghaziabad on the same day at 10:35pm. The Informant also informed that the Deceased was wearing white dress of Judo-Karate and blue coloured slippers.

3. Another two days passed by, yet there was no trace of the Deceased and the Informant got worried. He went to the police station at 9:30 pm on 8.9.2004. He lodged another report expressing his doubts that the Deceased might have been kidnapped.

4. There were no phone calls, no trace of the Deceased for another two days, then the case unfolded like a thriller and police got into action : their investigation was equally dramatic.

Phone Calls for Ransom

5. On 10.9.2004, the Informant received a phone call on the Reliance mobile number 33057452 (Informant’s mobile)1 that the Deceased is with the caller and money be arranged. Subsequently, some more phone calls upto 16.9.2004 asking ransom for the Deceased were received on the Informant’s phone. The Informant insisted that he should be permitted to talk with the Deceased but the Deceased was never put on the phone line by the assailants. Appendix-1 is an index of all other appendixes and explains mnemonic names of different phone numbers. The details of the calls demanding ransom on the Informant’s mobile are mentioned in Appendix-2.

6. The phone numbers of the phones from where calls were being made was never displayed except in the first and the last phone call. They were traced to a PCO in Murad Nagar district Ghaziabad. The other phone calls, where no phone number was displayed, were traced to Balasore, Orissa. This gave an inkling to the police that the assailant may be someone known to the family living in Murad Nagar and who hails from Orissa. The police started looking for such a person. The Informant told them about Vishal Permanand (Appellant-1) and one more such person who were working in the shop of his younger brother.

7. The police took double pronged investigation : one investigating officer (IO) Alok Kumar (PW-11) was sent to Balasore, Orissa and the other IO, RB Kaul (PW-13) continued investigation at Ghaziabad.

Police Investigation-Prosecution Case

8. Alok Kumar (PW-11) armed with the calls details of Informant’s mobile (which only had area code but not phone number) contacted Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (the BSNL) employees Shashidhar (PW-5) and Ram Chandra Nayak (PW-6) at Balasore, Orissa. They informed him that :

At least four calls were from Basta main exchange that in turn has calls from 17 small exchanges;

The remaining calls could not be located as their machines were not totally functional;

Out of these 17 exchanges, calls from 12 exchanges do not indicate phone numbers as the callers-IDs have not been released;

The machines in the PCOs have record of last two months and that can indicate from which PCO, the calls were made.

These facts are deposed by the aforesaid two BSNL employees and Alok Kumar (PW-11) at the trial.

9. Alok Kumar (PW-11) had started checking the machine of the PCOs under the aforesaid 12 exchanges and then came across two PCOs that had call references to Informant’s mobile. They were across a railway crossing and were at 50 meters apart. One belonged to Chakradhar Giri (PW-7) (the Chakradhar PCO) and the other belonged to Ravindra Nath Khamre (PW-8) (the Khamre PCO).

10. During investigation with the PCO owners, the name of Subhash Rai (Appellant -3) surfaced. It was revealed