Hon'ble Shri Justice Ramesh Sinha, CJ

Hon’ble Shri Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal, J

Judgment on Board

14.05.2026

Per, Ramesh Sinha, CJ.

1 Though the matters were listed for orders on application for suspension of sentence and grant of bail to appellants-Aman Lahre & Kaleshwar (in CRA No. 925 of 2021) while remaining appellants are on bail, however, with the consent of the parties, all these appeals are being heard and decided together by this common judgment as all the appeals arise out of same crime number, same sessions trial and by a common judgment.

2 All the appeals have been filed by the appellants against the impugned judgment of conviction and order of sentence dated 14.07.2021 passed by Additional Sessions Judge, Janjgir, District Janjgir Champa, in Sessions Trial No.17 of 2020 whereby all the appellants have been convicted for the offences under Sections 302 read with Section 149 and Section 148 of IPC and sentenced in the following manner:

3 Brief facts of the case are that, the complainant Pintu @ Jamuna Prasad Yadav, PW-1 lodged a report to the police on 28.10.2019 that at about 6:30 PM when he along with Ashutosh Dewangan were standing near Betel shop of Amarnath, six persons persons came in three two wheeler vehicles from Hanuman Dhara side and went ahead after abusing them. Ashutosh protested and they chased them by their motorcycle. Those six persons met near Gamla shop at Kurda road and when they asked as to why they abused them, all the accused persons started assaulting them by wooden and bamboo clubs. Two persons out of them were assaulting them by hand and fist and belt. One was assaulted by stone. By the assault made by the accused persons, Ashutosh received head injury and fell down on the spot despite that they were continue assaulting them by kick and fist. When he intervened, he too was assaulted by one of the accused and due to fear he ran away from the spot. After sometime, when he came back, he saw Ashutosh lying in unconscious condition. FIR Ex.P/1 was registered by the police against six named accused persons. Injured Ashutosh were sent to Govt. Hospital Champa where he was declared brought dead. Merg intimation Ex.P/8 was sent by the Doctor to Champa Police through memo Ex.P/7. Inquest of the dead body of the deceased was prepared and the dead body of deceased was sent for its postmortem to Govt. Hospital Champa where PW-11, Dr. Brijmohan Lal Jagriti, conducted postmortem of the dead body and gave his report Ex.P/30. During his postmortem, the doctor noticed one lacerated wound over occipital region bone deed and occipital bone were found fractured, both eyelid swallowed, lacerated wound in right forehead, bleeding present from nose, abrasion found over left forearm and contusion over left side of chest. On internal examination, fracture of occipital bone was found and brain matter contused. The doctor has opined that caused of death is due to head injury and also multiple injury in body as a result of cardio respiratory failure. The nature can be homicidal and injuries were caused by hard and blunt object.

Spot map Ex.P/2 was prepared by the police whereas P/5 by Patwari. Two broken pieces of bamboo club, stone, bloodstained and plain soil were seized from the spot vide seizure memo Ex.P/20. The accused persons Aman Lahre, Virendra Kumar Ratre, Ravi Kumar Bhargaw and Kaleshwar Bhargaw were arrested on 29.10.2019 and the accused Rileshwhar Khande @ Sittu and Prafull @ Pappu Jatwar were arrested on 31.10.2019 and their memorandum statement P/9 (Aman Lahre), P/11 (Ravi @ Chhotu Bhargaw), P/14 (Kaleshwar), P/16 (Prafull Jatwar) and P/18 (Rileshwar Khande) have been recorded. Based on their memor