IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH Criminal Misc. No.A-194-MA of 2011 Date of Decision : November 16, 2011 Satya Devi ....Applicant Versus State of Punjab and another ....Respondents CORAM : HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE T.P.S. MANN Present : Mr. Mohd. Yousaf, Advocate for the applicant. T.P.S. MANN, J. The applicant, who falls within the definition of “victim” as contained in Section 2(wa) of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1973, hereinafter referred to as “the Code”, has filed the present application under Section 378(4) of the Code for grant of special leave to appeal against the judgment dated 22.11.2010 passed by Judge, Special Court, Patiala whereby the accused/respondent No.2 was acquitted of the charge under Section 3(1)(x) of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. In order to secure the conviction of the accused for the aforementioned offence, the prosecution was required to establish that the accused while uttering the derogatory words, knew that the victim belonged to Scheduled Caste. In the complaint Ex.PA submitted by the victim to the D.S.P., Rajpura, no mention was made that the victim belonged to Scheduled Caste or the accused was not the member of the Scheduled caste or he knew that the victim belonged to Scheduled Caste. Even while appearing as PW1, the victim did not depose anything in respect of the above. Mere fact that the accused belonged to Criminal Misc. No.A-194-MA of 2011 -2- the same village as the victim and, therefore, having knowledge of the latter belonging to Scheduled Caste is not sufficient to sustain the charge against the accused. The accused had taken the plea in his statement under Section 313 Cr.P.C. that he was falsely implicated due to political reasons as he had earlier submitted a complaint against the victim before the Panchayat authorities. He also produced DW1 Jasbir Singh working as Accounts Clerk in the Panchayat Department, who proved the copy of the complaint submitted by him against the victim. While in the witness-box, the victim did not deny that the accused remained member of the Gram Panchayat and had submitted application to the Director, Panchayats with regard to illegal digging of the Panchayat land by her. On the other hand, PW2 Randhir Singh refused to support the case of the prosecution and went on to testify that before he had reached the place of occurrence, the incident was already over. Once the trial Court has considered all the evidence available on the file to come to the conclusion that the prosecution had failed to prove the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt, this Court would not grant any indulgence to the applicant by granting special leave to appeal against the impugned judgment. The application, being devoid of any merit is, accordingly, dismissed. ( T.P.S.MANN ) November 16, 2011 JUDGE satish