ThisFIR shows that the police station was situated very close to the place ofoccurrence, i.e. about 300 yards on the west.PW-8 examined the injuries of PW-1, PW-3 and PW-6 on November 16, 1991 atBihia Block Hospital between 12:30 pm to 1:15 pm.He found all the injuries simple in nature but injuryNo.2 and 3 were penetrating wounds on chest, right side of back and lowerpart of right arm above elbow joint.On PW-3, he found two injuries, onewas incised wound over front portion of head 3” x ½” skin deep and theother was penetrating wound on the right side of abdomen ½” x ¼” x ¾”.Theinjuries were found to be simple.On PW-6, the informant, he found threeinjuries.One was a lacerated wound on the left side of head ¼” x ¼”xscalp deep upto bone, the second injury was also lacerated wound on leftside near middle of head 1” x ¼” x 1/6”.The third injury was a swelling3” x 2” on left buttock.A.K. SIKRI, J.Five appellants, who were tried for offence under Section302 read with Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code and convicted by thetrial court, have approached this Court after their conviction was upheldby the High Court as well vide impugned judgment dated September 28, 2007.During the pendency of this appeal, one of the accused persons, namelyHiralal Yadav, expired and the appeal qua him stood abated.The validityof the judgment of the High Court in respect of the remaining fourappellants is the subject matter of this appeal.To trace out the prosecution case in brief, it may be mentioned that onNovember 16, 1991, at about 9:00 am, Ajodhaya Yadav, armed with a lathi,and other four appellants armed with bhala, were ploughing a fieldbelonging to the informant while Kashinath Yadav exhorted others to killthe informant Ramji Yadav.Hiralal Yadav caused a bleeding injury on thehead of the informant with a bhala.The informant in order to save hislife shouted on which his uncle Ramayan Yadav (deceased), his fatherDharichhan Yadav (PW-1) and his brother Bir Bahadur Yadav (PW-3), came inorder to save him.Hiralal Yadav then caused a bhala injury on the chestand abdomen of the deceased who fell down and became unconscious.PW-1also fell down as he was assaulted with bhala by Kashinath Yadav and KamtaYadav causing injuries on his abdomen, back of the body and hand.PW-3 wasalso assaulted by Ajodhaya Yadav with lathi and also by Bhim Yadav withbhala on head causing bleeding injury.On the shouts raised by theinformant and his party, Dudhnath Yadav (PW-2) and Jagdish Yadav came andsaved them.Other persons from the village also came and thereafter theaccused persons stopped assaulting and fled away.The reason for theoccurrence was said to be a dispute over the land and litigation in thepast which had resulted in filing of a court case also.The Investigating Officer inspected theplace of occurrence; prepared Inquest Report (Exhibit – 3); sent the bodyfor postmortem examination and obtained postmortem report; recorded thestatement of witnesses, including further statement of the informant; andsubmitted charge-sheet for the offence under Section 302 and otherprovisions of the IPC.After taking cognizance, the Magistrate committedthe case to the Court of Sessions where charges were framed for variousoffences, including Section 302 IPC.The appellants pleaded 'Not Guilty'to the charges.After the trial, accused persons were found guilty by thetrial court for offence under Section 302 IPC and were awarded imprisonmentfor life.The judgments of the Courts below reflect that the prosecution, in order toprove its case, examined nine witnesses.PW-1, Dharichhan Yadav, is thefather of the informant.He also sustained injuries and claimed to be aneye witness to the occurrence, as mentioned in the FIR itself.He hasfully supported the prosecution case.PW-2, Dudhnath Yadav, is the brotherof PW-1, who came on the shouts raised, and has claimed to have seen theoccurrence.PW-3, Bir Bahadur Yadav, is the son of the deceased RamayanYadav.Like PW-1, he is also an injured eye witness to the incident.Hehas fully supported the prosecution case.Sonia Devi (PW-4) and MunesariDevi (PW-5) are mother and wife respectively of the informant.PW-4 hasclaimed to have gone to the place of occurrence on hearing the shouts andalso claimed to have seen the occurrence, whereas PW-5 stated that she wason the roof of her house and from there she saw the entire occurrence asthe place of incident was close to her house.Ramji Yadav (PW-6) is theinformant, who also suffered injuries and as claimed by him in thefardbayan as well as in his deposition in the Court, he saw the entireoccurrence from beginning till end.Dr. Rajesh Kumar Singh (PW-7) held theautopsy on the dead body of the deceased.According to him, the postmortemexamination was held on November 17, 1991 at 8:00 am.He found thefollowing eight injuries on the dead body of the deceased:“(i) Incised wound with clean cut edges 1” x 2/10”x whole thickness of thepina of right ear.(ii) Incised wound 1½” x ½” x 2/10” on the upper portion of the right arm.(iii) Incised wound 1” x 2/10” x 2/10” on the back of the scalp left side.(iv) Incised wound 1/10” x 1/10” x 1/10” on the front of right shoulder.(v) Incised wound 1” x 1/2”x abdominal cavity deep on the right side ofabdomen upper portion.(vi) Swelling 2” x 2” on the left side of back of scalp.(vii) Penetrating wound with cut edges 1” x ½x chest cavity deep on theright side of chest.2½” away from midline almost in the middle.(viii) Incised wound ¾” x 1/10”x skin deep on the middle finger of righthand.” In his opinion, all the injuries were ante mortem caused by sharpcutting pointed instruments and the time elapsed since death was within 36hours of postmortem examination.He found the cause of death to be injuryNo.(vii), a penetrating wound 1” x ½” chest cavity deep on the right sideof chest.He has further opined that the injuries could be caused bybhala.However, injury No. (vi) could be caused by lathi also.Thestomach of the deceased contained undigested food material and the bladderwas empty.The injuries were simple.Some of the injurieson PW-1 and PW-3 were by sharp weapons like bhala, but in case of PW-6, thedoctor opined that the injuries were by hard and blunt substance likelathi.The age of injuries in respect of all the three injured was foundto be within six hours.The injury reports of the three injured wereproved by PW-8 as Exhibits – 2, 2/1 and 2/2 respectively.The investigation was done by Surajdeo Ram (PW-9), Investigating Officer,as pointed out earlier.During inspection, he found the place ofoccurrence to be a field belongiong to the informant in which potato crophad already been planted.He found that potato crop marks of three roundsof ploughing were visible.He also seized blood stained earth from theplace of occurrence.He has stated in his cross-examination that report ofthe occurrence was first received by him from Chowkidar and on that basis aStation Diary Entry was made but he did not record the statement ofChowkidar.He has admitted that he has written the Case Diary in asystematic manner, as the events unfolded, and the fardbayan is mentionedin paragraph 1 of the Case Diary.He has also stated that after thefardbayan, further statement of the informant was recorded and the place ofoccurrence was inspected and only thereafter formal FIR was instituted.According to his statement in the cross-examination, in respect of theearlier statements made by PWs 1, 2 and 3 under Section 161 of the Code ofCriminal Procedure, 1973, there was virtually no difference in what theyhad stated regarding the occurrence in Court.As far as PW-4 is concerned,she has deposed that she had not told him in clear terms, in her earlierstatement, as to which of the accused persons were having bhala and who wasploughing and that Hiralal had assaulted on head with bhala and thedeceased had received injury on head with bhala.She had also not statedon what part her husband (PW-1) had received injuries by bhala and that theaccused persons fled away on arrival of Jagdish and Dudhnath Yadav.Various contentions were raised before the High Court with an endeavour tofind loopholes in the judgment of the trial court regarding conviction ofthe appellants.It was argued that the time of offence had not been provedby the prosecution beyond reasonable doubt because the Doctor had opined,while conducting the postmortem examination on November 17, 1991 at 8:00am, that the death of the deceased appeared within 36 hours, whereasaccording to the prosecution case, death had taken place within 23 hours.It was also argued that the nature of injuries found on the deceased andinjured persons did not support the prosecution case.Another submissionwas that though the Investigating Officer (PW-9) had admitted in his cross-examination that information of the occurrence was first given by aChowkidar, which was incorporated in his Station Diary Entry as well, FIRwas not registered on the basis of said information and that Chowkidar wasnot even produced as a prosecution witness.All the aforesaid arguments have been rejected by the High Court as withoutany substance.It is not necessary to reproduce the discussion of the HighCourt on these arguments as before us the learned counsel pressed only lastof the aforesaid arguments, in addition to couple of other submissions.In the first instance, the learned counsel drew our attention to the FIRand referred to the following column regarding the place of incident:It was submitted that when the place of incident was 300 sq. yds.away, it was impossible for the witnesses to see the occurrence clearly andidentify the accused persons.fromthe Police Station in West direction.It is nowhere stated that those whowere eye witnesses to the incident had seen the occurrence from a distanceof 300 sq. yds.

Relevant sections: Section 302 in The Indian Penal Code; Section 149 in The Indian Penal Code