Discrepancies in eyewitness accounts undermined the prosecution's case, leading to the acquittal of the accused due to reasonable doubt of their involvement in the crime.

JUDGMENT :

Madan Pal Singh, J.

1. The criminal appeal No. 2516 of 2022 and Criminal Appeal No. 2518 of 2022 have been filed against the judgement and order dated 31.3.2022 passed by the Additional Sessions Judge, Court No. 11, Allahabad, in Sessions Trial No. 620 of 2011 (State vs.Rakesh Tiwari and another and Session Trial No. 1045 of 2011(State vs. Kunjan Lal Tiwari and others) arising out of Case Crime No. 209 of 2010 under Sections 147, 148, 149, 302, 307, 452, 506 of IPC and Section 7 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, Police Station - Manda, District -Allahabad.

2. Upon an incident having taken place allegedly at 9:00am on 17.12.2010, a first information report was lodged at 1:00pm by the son of the deceased Vinay Kumar Tiwari who had appeared in the case as P.W.-1. The name of the deceased was Daya Shankar Tiwari.

3. This made the investigating agency i.e. the U.P. Police to go into action and a panchayatnama was drawn vis-a-vis the dead body on 17.12.2010 itself at around 3:00pm. Thereafter, on the next day i.e. on 18.12.2010, the post mortem of the dead body was conducted at 12:30PM. The police had collected from the site in question, blood stained soil and plain soil along with a muffler. Pieces of broken glass were also recovered and a recovery memo of those recovered articles was made and the injured Vidhan Chandra Tiwari was attended to and injury report which is exhibited as Exhibit Ka3 was also prepared on that very date. Also, the X-rays of the injuries which were required to be taken was done. After the conclusion of the investigation, the Police submitted its report on 15.3.2011. Thereafter, the Additional Sessions Judge, on 20.7.2011 framed charges against Rakesh Tiwari and Kamlesh Tiwari. Thereafter, charges were also framed against Nageshwar Tiwari, Vedmani Tiwari and Kunjan Tiwari. For proving the case, the prosecution produced as many as 10 prosecution witnesses who were as follows:-

1.Vinay Kumar Tiwari 2. Vidhan Chandra Tiwari 3. Dr. Santosh Kumar 4. Dr. S.P. Singh 5. Ram Jeevan 6. Anil Kumar 7. Deep Kumar, 8. Dr. Mani Bhusan Tiwari, 9. Awadhraj, and 10. Surendra Kumar Sharma.

4. Form the side of the defence, 5 defence witnesses were produced who were as follows:-

1. Dr. Ankit Ram, 2. Ram Jeevan, 3. Dr. B.K. Singh, 4. Dr. S.K. Rai, 5. Manoj Kumar Shukla.

5. The P.W.-1, Vinay Kumar Tiwari, had on oath stated that the day when he commenced with his testimony, the incident had been 7 months old. He has stated that on account of the fact that the accused persons, namely, Kunjan Lal Tiwari, Rakesh Tiwari, Kamlesh Tiwari, Nageshwar Tiwari and Vedmani Tiwari were inimical because of an election rivalry, they had consciously with weapons in their hands and with an intention to kill entered the house of the first informant and the deceased. He had stated that Kunjan Lal Tiwari had directly addressed his father and had questioned him as to why he had opposed him in the election to the post of Pradhan. While he was questioning the father, Rakesh Kumar Tiwari another accused with a firearm in his hand, fired on the father of the P.W.- 1. Similarly, Kamlesh Tiwari who had also a firearm in his hands with an intention to kill had fired. The bullets fired by Rakesh Kumar Tiwari had hit the chest of the father of the first informant and the bullet fired by the Kamlesh Tiwari had hit Vidhan Chandra Tiwari on his hip. While this was happening the elder brother of the first informant, namely, Vyas Ji raised a hue and cry and because of that the accused persons fired indiscriminately on the first informant’s side. He has stated that Vyas Ji and he himself