Criminal Appeal (SJ) No. 73 OF 1996 Against the judgment and order dated 21.03.1996 passed by Sri Awadh Kishore Singh Chauhan, 2nd Additional Sessions Judge, Darbhanga in S.Tr. No. 8/86. ************ Ramnath Prasad, S/o late Sarjug Prasad, resident of Village-Sonki, P.S.-Sonki (Darbhanga) Dist.- Darbhanga. ……(Appellant) Versus THE STATE OF BIHAR-------(Respodent) ************* For the Appellants : Mr. Uday Chand Prasad, Adv. : Mr. B.K. Sinha, Adv. : Mr. Manoj Kumar, Adv. For the State : Mr. Binod Bihari Singh, APP. ************** P R E S E N T THE HON'BLE JUSTICE SMT. ANJANA PRAKASH Anjana Prakash, J. 1. The appellant has been convicted under Section 304 IPC and sentenced to RI for seven years by the 2nd Additional Sessions Judge, Darbhanga in S.Tr. No. 8/86 by a judgment dated 21.03.1996. 2. The case of the prosecution is that there was 107 Cr.P.C. proceeding pending between the parties on account of land which fell in between the house of the accused and the informant and on the fateful day i.e. 28.09.1983 the accused persons variously armed assaulted the husband of the informant on account of which he died a week later. 3. The defence of the accused was that the wife of the deceased was abusing the wife of the appellant and when it was protested the appellant’s wife 2 was dragged and assaulted and when he went to save her the prosecution party armed assaulted the appellant and in this transaction the deceased sustained injuries and later died. The defence also examined two witnesses on its behalf in support of its case and also proved the First Information Report instituted in this regard as other documents vide Annexure- A, B and C. 3. During trial the prosecution in all examined eleven witnesses out of whom P.W. 10 is the Doctor who had examined the injured/deceased on 28.09.1983 and found three injuries on his person. P.W. 9 is the Doctor who held the post-mortem examination on the deceased and also found three injuries on the person of the deceased but he opined that that was on account of coma, septicemia and shock. P.W. 1, P.W. 2. P.W. 3, P.W. 4, P.W. 6 and P.W. 7 are the witnesses on the point of occurrence and they are close relative of the informant. P.W. 5 is a formal witness and P.W. 8 did not support the case of the prosecution and was therefore declared hostile. 4. On going through the evidence on record, I find that P.W. 2, P.W. 3, P.W. 4 and P.W. 6 are all corroborative witnesses and they have stoutly denied the defence version which casts shadow on the veracity of the prosecution case. Further, the death of the deceased also appears to be on account of septicemia 3 and, therefore, it is difficult to sustain the conviction of the appellant under Section 304 IPC. In the result, the conviction of the appellant is converted to one under Section 325 IPC and sentence is modified to the period already undergone by him. 5. With the aforesaid modifications in conviction and sentence, the appeal is dismissed. (Anjana Prakash, J.) Patna High Court, Patna, Dated, the 28th June, 2011. NAFR/Vikash/-