The last seen theory, motive, blood group matching, and chain of circumstantial evidence are crucial in establishing guilt in murder cases.

JUDGMENT :

Shailendra Shukla, J.

1. The present appeal has been preferred under Section 374 of Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 against the judgment dated 28.11.2013 passed in Session Trial No. 10/2008, wherein the appellants have been convicted as under:-

Conviction Sentence

Section & Act Imprisonment Fine Amount Imprisonment in lieu of fine

302 IPC

Life Imprisonment Rs. 10,000/- 2 years RI

201 IPC

03 years RI Rs. 2,000/- 6 months RI

2. Precisely speaking, the prosecution story in short was that there were illicit relation between appellant no. 1-Narendra Singh Panwar with his cousin Sandhya @ Vidhya. In June 2007, Sandhya got engaged with deceased Arvind. Arvind had gifted her a mobile phone and both used to talk to each other after engagement, Appellant No. 1-Narendra Singh Panwar and appellant No. 2-Dilip Prajapati were friends and used to work in Ranbaxy Company. The appellants conspired to kill Arvind. In pursuance of this conspiracy, appellant No. 1-Narendra called Arvind on 08.09.2007 to Bhopal square situated at Dewas. When Arrived at the spot at about 8:00 pm, he met appellants there and they also sat on the same motorcycle of Arvind and moved towards Bhopal road. They were seen by Manish Choudhary (PW/27), Ajay Singh (PW/8) and Lokendra Singh (PW/21) and Rajeev Sharma (PW/9). They saw all three of them going in the same motorcycle. On the next day on 09.09.2007, village Chowkidar found body of a Arvind in a trench near Badichurlai road. The aforesaid information when received by the police station-Bhonrasa, a merg was instituted and Assistant Sub-Inspector, (ASI) Mr. H.A. Jafri (PW/25) prepared the spot map. Identification memo of the deceased was also executed. From the spot, blood soaked and normal soil were also seized, two shirt buttons, blood soaked handkerchief and hair strands were also seized and the dead body was sent for conducting the postmortem. Thereafter, FIR was instituted against unknown persons under Sections 302 and 201 of IPC.

3. The motorcycle driven by deceased was recovered on 10.09.2007. Thereafter, on 13.09.2007, appellant No. 1-Narendra was arrested and documents showing affair between him and Sandhya, the fiancee of deceased-Arvind were seized. On the basis of his memorandum, a knife was seized and his blood soaked clothes were also seized. Some injuries were also found on the person of appellant No. 1-Narendra. On 04.10.2007, appellant No. 2-Dilip was arrested and on his memorandum also, blood soaked knife was seized and a shirt was seized in which two buttons were missing, his clothes were also seized which were blood soaked and all these seized material were sent to FSL.

4. After investigation, chargesheet was filed. Charges were framed. The appellants abjured their guilt and in the statements made under Section 313 of Criminal Procedure Code, appellant No. 1-Narendra pleaded alibi saying that at the time of incident, he was in his house with his family, whereas appellant No. 2-Dilip claimed to have no acquaintance with co-accused Narendra.

5. The trial Court examined 31 witnesses in all. The appellants claimed to adduce the defence evidence but no defence evidence was lead on their behalf. The appellants were ultimately convicted, as described earlier, in paragraph 1 of this order.

6. Learned counsel for the appellants in support of his appeal filed under Section 374 of Criminal Procedure Code, has submitted that the last seen witnesses are not reliable, that statements made under Section 161 of Criminal Procedure Code of Ajay Singh (PW/8) were recorded very belatedly after fourteen days of the incident, that there is no matching of buttons found on the spot with the buttons of the shirt seized from appellant No. 2-Dilip, that another witness Rajeev Sharma (PW/9) in para 14 has stated that he did not know the deceased very well, that he had many opportunities to give statements and information of the factum of last seen, but he did not do so (paras 15, 16 and 17), that there was no motive in murdering