Sukhbir Singh & Anr vs State Of Punjab

2. At about 9 p.m. on the 26th December 1991 Naranjan Singh PW-2 son of Jaswant Singh deceased a resident of village Vinjwan was in his house along with his father when there was a knock at the door.

3. The prosecution in support of its case placed reliance on the evidence of Sukhdip Singh PW-1, the doctor who had carried out the post-mortem on the dead body, Naranjan Singh PW-2, Mohinder Singh Lambardar PW-3 who too supported the prosecution story and further stated that he had seen Harbans Singh and his sons talking to one of the appellants, and PW-8 Sub-Inspector Jarnail Singh who had recorded the statement of Naranjan Singh near the canal minor bridge and which had led to the registration of the formal FIR.

4. The trial court relying on the aforesaid evidence convicted all the accused for offences punishable under Section 120-B of the IPC and Crl. Appeal No.1198/2007 4 sentenced them to RI of 7 years and to fine, Sukhbir Singh and Dilbagh Singh appellants under Section 302 of the IPC and sentenced them to life imprisonment along with fine and Harbans Singh, Mohanjit Singh, Amir Singh and Bhupender Singh under Section 302/149 of the IPC also to serve a life sentence. The matter was thereafter taken in appeal to the High Court and during the pendency of the appeal Harbans Singh passed away. The appeal against him has dismissed as having abated. The High Court observed that there was no delay in the lodging of the FIR in which the names of Harbans Singh, Mohanjit Singh, Amir Singh and Bhupender Singh alias Shastri had been mentioned, and although the two main accused (the appellants herein) had not been named, but they fitted the description given in the FIR and that further support with regard to the occurrence was to be found from the statements of Naranjan Singh and Mohinder Singh PWs. as to the manner in which the entire incident happened which clearly revealed that the two sets of accused had entered into a conspiracy to eliminate Jaswant Singh as he was an impediment in the efforts of Harbans Singh and others to take over the school land. The High Court observed that the two primary assailants Sukhbir Singh and Dilbagh Singh had opened fire on Jaswant Singh only after getting a green signal from Harbans Singh and his sons. The Court also observed that the identification of the appellants in Court for the first time fully satisfied the test of proper identification notwithstanding Crl. Appeal No.1198/2007 5 the fact that they had been arrested long after the incident on the 21st May 1992 by Sub-

Inspector Pyara Singh who had not been produced as a witness. The High Court also observed that as PW-3 Mohinder Singh was an independent witness, there was no reason whatsoever to disbelieve his testimony. Two appeals have been filed against the judgment of the High Court. Criminal Appeal No. 1198 of 2007 by Sukhbir Singh and Dilbagh Singh and Special Leave Petition (Crl) No. 558 of 2008 by Amir Singh, Mohanjit Singh and Bhupender Singh. We grant leave in this Special Leave Petition as well. As already indicated above, the facts have been taken from Criminal Appeal No. 1198 of 2007.

7. We now consider the case of the appellants in the connected matter. The suggestion made by the prosecution is that Sukhbir Singh and Dilbagh Singh had been engaged by the other appellants to settle scores with Jaswant Singh as he was apparently an obstacle in their way with respect to the school land. We have, in this connection, gone through the evidence of Naranjan Singh PW-2 and Mohinder Singh PW-3, in the background of these facts. We are of the opinion that the involvement of Sukhbir Singh and Dilbagh Singh has to be ruled out as they were not properly identified and the charge qua them under Section 302 read with Section 120-B of the IPC must fail. It is the prosecution Crl. Appeal No.1198/2007 8 story that a dispute regarding the school land existed between Jaswant Singh and Naranjan Singh on the one side and Harbans Singh and his sons Amir Singh, Mohanjit Singh and Bhupender Singh appellants on the other. It is also clear that in this dispute PW-3 Mohinder Singh, the Lambardar was siding with Jaswant Singh. We have gone through the evidence of PW-2 and PW-3 very carefully. We see very substantial improvements in the statements made by PW-2 in Court vis-a-vis his statement made to the Police. Confronted with these statements, he could not give any cogent explanation for making them. It is also clear that except for his ipse-dixit with regard to the dispute, there is no other evidence that any dispute did exist. It has come in the evidence that no threat had ever been received by Jaswant Singh from militants prior to the incident. We are, therefore, of the opinion that the statement of this witness cannot be relied upon. The statement of PW-3 is equally uncertain. PW-3 made very substantial improvements in his evidence as well. The story that after seeing the murder, he had not made any attempt to meet Naranjan Singh, and his plea that after the incident he had returned home and had gone to sleep is difficult to swallow as it would be contrary to normal human behaviour. He also stated that a grant of Rs.1,00,000/- had been received for the school about 12 days prior to the incident and that the Qanungo had demarcated the school land which was legitimately in possession of Harbans Singh. No cogent evidence to this effect has been Crl. Appeal No.1198/2007 9 produced by the prosecution. We are, therefore, of the opinion that the evidence of this witness cannot also be believed.

8. We therefore have no option but to allow Criminal Appeal No. 1198 of 2007 as well as Criminal Appeal No........../2011 arising out of SLP (Crl.) No. 5580 of 2008 filed by Amir Singh and others. The judgment of the trial court dated 7th August 1997 and that of the High Court dated 12th January 2007 are set aside.