By the Court.—Heard Shri G.S. Chaturvedi, learned Senior Counsel alongwith Shri Dheeraj Singh Vohra and Ms. Somya Chaturvedi learned counsel for the appellants and Shri Jai Narayan, learned A.G.A. for the State and Shri D.K. Srivastava learned counsel for complainant.

2. This appeal arises out of the judgment of the learned Additional Sessions Judge Bareeily in Sessions Trial Nos. 72 of 2007 and 73 of 2007 in Case Crime No. 270 of 2006 respectively. The appellants before us are father and son, who were accused of having conspired with a third accused Ajay Kumar Sharma (also described as Mishra in the tesimony of PW), who is stated to be still absconding and has not faced trial, to commit the murder of the deceased Smt. Poonam, the daughter of the appellant No. 1 and the sister of the appellant No. 2, and also having caused injuries to PW 2 Pankaj Gupta, who is the husband of the deceased. The appellants have been finally convicted and sentenced for life imprisonment alongwith other sentences and fine and in default thereof to undergo further imprisonment as per the judgment in relation to the offences committed under Sections 302 read with Section 34 IPC, 307 IPC, 452 IPC, 506 (2) IPC and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code. The appellant No. 2 Vivek has also been convicted and sentenced under Section 25 of the Indian Arms Act. All the sentences are to run concurrently.

3. The appeal questions the correctness of the judgment for which the learned counsel for the appellants has urged that on a perusal of the entire evidence on record, neither the factum of the involvement of the accused is established nor conspiracy to commit the murder can be concluded and in the absence of any such conclusive evidence, the prosecution has failed to establish the case beyond reasonable doubt. Consequently the impugned judgment of the trial Court dated 30.7.2011 deserves to be set aside and the appellants deserve to be acquitted.

4. We have gone through the original records and the pleadings. We find that the FIR discloses the incident to have taken place in a sequence namely the arrival of the appellant Kishun Dev at 8:00 a.m. in the morning on 20.2.2006 at the residence of the deceased in Bareilly and having threatened the deceased and her husband with dire consequences. The FIR further discloses that on the same day at about 5:30 p.m. the appellants alongwith one Ajay Sharma with fire-arms barged into the residence of the deceased and opened fire thereby causing the death of Smt. Poonam and causing fire-arm injuries to her husband PW-2.

5. PW 1 Neeraj is the informant and is the brother of PW 2 who who lodged the FIR at 7:15 p.m. on the same day at Police Station Baradari Bareily. The FIR further discloses that when the appellant No. 2 Vivek and his associate Ajay Sharma, who has been described in the evidence as Ajay Kumar Mishra, arrived and opened fire, the same was witnessed by the informant’s aunt Smt. Sushila Gupta (Chachi) wife of Hari Om Gupta, and his uncle Shiv Om Gupta. The informant was also present and the FIR further recites that all of them tried to prevent this mishap, but after the incident, they rushed with both the injured persons namely the deceased Smt. Poonam and Pankaj PW 2 keeping in view their serious conditions to Siddhi Vinayak Hospital. During this period, before they reach the hospital, the deceased Smt. Poonam expired on the way, whereafter the informant came to the police station to lodge the FIR. The scribe of the written report is Anil Kumar Gupta and the FIR was registered by Constable Jaiveer Singh who has been examined as PW 3.

6. After lodging of the FIR, the investigation proceeded and the post-mortem of the body of the deceased Smt. Poonam was conducted on the next day i.e. 21.2.2006 by PW 7 Dr. Suresh Chandra. The injured namely Pankaj Gupta was examined at Siddhi Vinayak Hospital and the medical examination report and the C.T. Scan report as well as the supplementary report has been exhibited as Ex