2.The facts in brief are that on March 19, 1973 being theHoli day, the appellant and one Rajan Mani went to the shopof the deceased bearing No. 1259/A/B situated at BalbirNagar, Shahdara, New Delhi and requested him to close thetea shop which he was vending and asked him to take part inplaying Holi.Thereon the deceased refused to accede totheir request.Thereafter, in a huff the appellant andRajan Mani went away with a dire threat to the deceased andhis father, Ved Prakash, PW-1, who remonstrated against thethreat.The appellant was charged for the offenceof murder ofSudhir on March 19, 1973 at 12 noon.The trial courtacquitted him of the charge, but on appeal the High Courtreversed the acquittal and convicted him under Section 302IPC and sentenced him to imprisonment for life.One hour thereafter the appellant came holding agupti (sharp edged weapon) in his right hand to the shop bywhich time the deceased was closing the shop.Rajan Manitook the deceased in his arms and held him back.Theappellant inflicted a fatal blow near the neck and also gaveother minor injuries.PW 1 and PW 3 have seen theoccurrence.The deceased was made to walk for a distance of2530 feet and thereafter he fell down at the house of PW 4.Then he was taken to the hospital.PW 12, thedoctor, conducted the autopsy and found that there were asmany as nine injuries and injury No. 2 was found to be fatalwhich in the opinion of the doctor was sufficient to causedeath in the ordinary course of nature.PW 1 is the fatherof the deceased.PW 3 is another independent witness, whohappened to come over to the area to his sister's house toplay Holi.3.The trial court disbelieved the evidence of PW 3 on theground that PW 1 did not disclose the name of the PW 3either in his initial statement under Section 161 or in hissupplementary statement.The name of PW 3 was also notdisclosed in the FIR.The statement under Section 164 ofCrPC was got recorded.As a result, his evidence wassuspect.The evidence of PW 1 was also disbelieved.TheHigh Court considered the evidence afresh and found that PW3 is an independent witness.PW 1 being the father of thedeceased is not464interested to exclude the real offender and implicate aninnocent person as the assailant of his son and that,therefore, their evidence was found acceptable.The HighCourt accordingly convicted the appellant and confirmed theacquittal of the co-accused, Rajan Mani.4.Shri Das Bahl, learned counsel for the appellant hasreiterated the contentions which were found acceptable tothe trial court, but on consideration of the evidence wefind no justifiable reason to differ from the High Court.It is seen that in the cross-examination of PW 3 he hasgraphically explained the attack mounted by the appellant onthe deceased, but for the fact that he was an eyewitness, itwould be difficult to give such a graphic description of thehappening of the occurrence.Absolutely PW 3 has no axe togrind against the appellant.No material contradictionshave been brought out to doubt his veracity except statingthat he was speaking falsely.PW 3 being an independentwitness, his evidence cannot become suspect merely becausethe statement under Section 164 CrPC was got recorded by thepolice.Perhaps with a view to see that he cannot be gainedover, the police in its usual precaution has got thestatement of PW 3 recorded under Section 164 CrPC.It mightbe that there is an attempt to pressurise PW 3 by gettingthe statement under Section 164 and the prosecutionattempted to pin him down to the statement given to them.But that ground should be taken as a caution to scrutinisethe evidence of PW 3 and subject it to critical examination.We have carefully scanned his evidence keeping these factorsin view and we find that absolutely there are no compellingreasons to differ from the assessment of the evidence by theHigh Court to disbelieve his evidence.That apart, we havethe evidence of PW 1, Ved Prakash, father of the deceased,which is sufficient to hold that the appellant alone hasinflicted the injury which resulted in the death of Sudhir.It is not disputed that PW 1 was present at the time whenthe shop was being closed.Even at the first instance also,the father was present when the threat was administered bythe appellant to the father himself, when he remonstratedagainst the obstruction to his son continuing the teabusiness in his shop.5.On a totality of the facts and the circumstances, weare satisfied that the evidence of PW 1 and PW 3 inspiresconfidence to be acceptable.Accordingly, we accept theirevidence.We have seen the evidence.7.We have seen the nature of the injuries and also thetime gap between the time ofinfliction of the injury tillthe date of death which was two days after the injurywasinflicted.We have no sufficient material as to the natureof the treatment given to the deceased during those twodays.

Sections cited: Section 302 in The Indian Penal Code, Section 300 in The Indian Penal Code