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S.B.Criminal Revision Petition No.63/2001

Sita Ram V/s The State of Rajasthan & anr.

28.3.2014

Hon'ble the Chief Justice Mr.Amitava Roy

Mr.Vineet Jain for the petitioner.

Mr.M.K.Garg for the respondent no.2.

Mr.Rajesh Bhati, Public Prosecutor.

The revisional jurisdiction of this Court has been

sought to be invoked to set at naught the judgment and order

dated 19.10.2000 passed by the learned Special Additional Sessions

Judge (Women Atrocities) Cases, Sri Ganganagar in Sessions Case

No.14/89 (77/97) thereby acquitting the respondent no.2 of the

charges for offences under sections 306 and 498A of the Indian

Penal Code (for short, hereinafter referred to as “the IPC”).

The prosecution case is traceable to a written report

(Ex.P-2) lodged at about 5.00 PM on 5.9.1986 by Sitaram, the

father of the deceased Smt.Kanta stating that his daughter had

been given in marriage to Pawan Kumar S/o Munshiram Agarwal on

20.5.1986, whereafter she was subjected to harassment and ill-

treatment on demands of dowry. It was disclosed that on 4.9.1986

at about 6.30 PM having received a telephonic information from

Raisinghnagar, the place of her matrimonial home, that she had

died of burn injuries, he alongwith others rushed there and on

seeing her dead daughter, entertained an impression that she had

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been murdered. The information was thus lodged with the SHO,

Police Station Raisinghnagar. On this a police case was registered

under section 306 IPC and on the completion of the investigation,

charge-sheet was laid against the respondent no.2, the mother-in-

law of the deceased. Eventually, charges were framed against her

under sections 306 and 498A IPC, to which she pleaded “not guilty”

and was made to stand trial. The prosecution at the trial examined

14 witnesses including the parents of the deceased, a few relations

of her, the doctor, who had performed the postmortem

examination on her as well as the investigating officer. The

respondent no.2 in course of her statement under section 313

Cr.P.C. abided by her denial of the charges. She examined 4

witnesses in defence as well. At the conclusion of the trial and on

a consideration of the materials on record, the learned trial court,

however, by the judgment and order impugned acquitted the

respondent no.2 of the charges.

Before adverting to the rival arguments, it would be

appropriate at the threshold to notice the grounds on which the

order of acquittal had been recorded. As would be apparent from

the impugned judgment and order, the learned trial court did

elaborately analyse the evidence on record and on the evaluation

thereof concluded as hereunder :-

(1)

The prosecution witnesses PW2 Sitaram, father of the

deceased, PW7 Geeta Devi, mother of the deceased, PW6

Madan Lal and PW8 Rajendra, brothers of the deceased, PW3

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Om Prakash, uncle of the deceased, PW4 Indra Devi, aunt of

the deceased have in their testimony at the trial

substantially departed from their statements made under

section 161 Cr.P.C. in course of the investigation thereby

improving their version in support of the charge on the

aspects of alleged demands of dowry and harassment to the

deceased stemming therefrom, so much so that their

evidence in Court was as a result of after thought and mutual

deliberations. That these witnesses in course of the

investigation did not implicate the respondent no.2, mother-

in-law of the deceased, Ramvilas, brother-in-law of the

deceased and Meera, sister-in-law of the deceased in alleged

demands of dowry, was also noticed. These witnesses,

however, involved the respondent no.2, Ramvilas and Meera

in their deposition at the trial. The learned trial court

construed these to be significant improvements deliberately

introduced later in point of time rendering the witnesses

untrustworthy.

(2)

There had been a substantial identicalness in the

nature of improvement in the