Dablu Mistry vs The State of Bihar

Anjana Prakash, J.—The Appellant has been convicted u/s 307 I.P.C. and sentenced to R.I. for five years by a judgment dated 29.1.1997 passed by the 2nd Additional Sessions Judge, Bhagalpur in S.T. No. 433 of 1994.

The case of the prosecution according to the informant Laxmi Sharma is that on 7.12.1993 when his wife Maina Devi went to buy some articles from the shop of one Modi, he found she was unnecessarily delaying and when he went to the place of occurrence he found one Shyam Sunder Mistry and Bablu Mistry were catching hold of his wife and Appellant was giving knife blows on her. When he tried to intervene, he was also assaulted with knife on the stomach. When he cried out, many villagers came to the place of occurrence and witnessed the occurrence. The reason for the alleged occurrence was that the wife of the informant was suspected to be a witch and she had been assaulted on account of it.

During trial, the prosecution has examined six witnesses. Out of whom, P.W.3 is the wife of the informant and injured, whereas P.W.2 is the informant himself. P.W.5 is the Investigating Officer and P.W.6 is the doctor, who examined the injured. P.W.1 also supported the factum of occurrence but did not name any of the accused persons. P.W.4 has been declared hostile.

On behalf of the defence, four witnesses were examined, who have deposed about the occurrence and that the assault had not been made by the present Appellant. The doctor (P.W.6), who examined the two injured, found only one injury on the person of the informant, whereas five injuries on the person of his wife (P.W.3) but in his opinion all the injuries were simple in nature.

On going through the evidence on record, I find that no independent witness has supported or corroborated the prosecution case. The doctor''s opinion of the injuries also indicates that there was no intention of the Appellant to cause the death of the injured. In view of such, the conviction of the Appellant is converted from one u/s 307 I.P.C. to one u/s 325 I.P.C. and the sentence is modified to the period already undergone by him during trial.

In the result, the appeal is dismissed with the aforesaid modification.