A conviction relies heavily on witness credibility; inconsistencies undermine prosecution cases.

O R D E R

The judgment rendered by the Sessions Court, Manjeri in S.C No.114/1996, acquitting the accused in connection with the commission of offence under Sections 143, 147, 148, 323, 324, 302 and 120 r/w Section 149 I.P.C is under challenge in this revision petition filed by PW4 in that case.

2. The prosecution case is that on 07.12.1993, the accused, who are CPI(M) activists, hatched a criminal conspiracy at the house of the first accused, to eliminate Congress men of that locality, and in pursuance to that conspiracy, they formed themselves into an unlawful assembly armed with dangerous weapons at about 8:00 p.m, and committed rioting in prosecution of their common object by physically assaulting one Appunni and PW1 to PW4 with dangerous weapons like chopper, sticks, cable wire etc. leading to the death of the above said Appunni and causing injuries to PW1 to PW4. The revision petitioner (PW4) is the son of the deceased Appunni.

3. In the trial before the learned Sessions Judge, the prosecution examined 19 witnesses as PW1 to PW19 and brought on record 37 documents as Exts.P1 to P37. Four material objects were identified as MO1 to MO4. From the part of the accused, one defence witness was examined as DW1 and four documents were marked as Exts.D1 to D4. After analysing the aforesaid evidence, the learned Sessions Judge came to the conclusion that the prosecution has not succeeded in proving beyond reasonable doubt the involvement of accused Nos.1 to 9 and accused Nos.11 to 21, who faced trial. Accordingly, the above accused were acquitted by the impugned judgment dated 02.09.2003. Aggrieved by the above verdict of acquittal, the petitioner (PW4) is here before this Court with this revision petition.

4. Heard the learned counsel for the revision petitioner, the learned counsel for respondents 2 to 22, and the learned Public Prosecutor representing the State of Kerala.

5. PW1 to PW5 were the witnesses cited and examined by the prosecution to establish the alleged criminal act of the accused assaulting them and the deceased Appunni with dangerous weapons. The incident is said to have happened in front of the bunk shop of PW1. It is PW1, who gave the first information statement to the police and set the criminal law in motion. However, when examined before the Trial Court, PW1 turned hostile and discredited the prosecution story. It is pertinent to note that, PW1 had even filed a private complaint before the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court, Ponnani as Crl.M.P No.2880/1994 alleging that one Vadakkekkat Abdu and Krishnan of Palakkad, were also involved in the incident, in addition to accused Nos.1 to 9. In the above complaint, PW2 to PW5 had tendered sworn statements in support of the contentions raised by PW1. In spite of the above, PW1 had resiled from his statement given to the police and testified before the Sessions Court that he had not given any such statement. Thus, the evidence tendered by PW1, in fact, debilitated the prosecution case. As regards the evidence of the other witnesses examined as PW2 to PW5, the Trial Court came to the conclusion that their evidence cannot be relied upon due to material contradictions and inconsistencies rendering it totally untrustworthy. The Trial Court observed in the impugned judgment that the statements tendered by the above witnesses before the learned Magistrate in the complaint preferred by PW1 as Crl.M.P No.2880/1994 militated against the statements given by those witnesses before the Trial Court. The Trial Court observed that there were marked inconsistencies in the above statements of those witnesses before the two judicial forums with regard to the identity of the assailants as well as the identity of the weapons alleged to have been used by them.

6. The learned