State Of Tripura vs Ram Bir Singh & Ors

3. The prosecution case in brief is that on 8.7.1996, some police personnel of Dharmanagar Police Station led by Sub-Inspector of Police, Sri Kamal Kar Chowdhury, who is the informant in the FIR, passed through the Town Hall of Dharmanagar for law and order duty. In the course of doing their duty, some organizer of a function approached the informant complaining that some CRPF personnel had gate crashed their function and forcibly occupied the seats in the hall. They were asked to vacate the seats but they refused to do so. Thereupon, the informant entered the hall and managed to remove the said CRPF personnel from the Hall. However, they returned to the hall and occupied the rear side seats of the hall by evicting the ticket holders. This was reported again to the informant, who again drove them out. This time, there was some scuffling between the informant and the said CRPF personnel in which one of them dealt a blow over the left eye of the informant due to which the latter sustained serious injury. Thereafter, the said CRPF personnel left the hall, but after threatening the police personnel with due consequences.

4. It is the case of prosecution that after the above incident, the CRPF personnel again returned to the hall with their fire arms and started firing indiscriminately. One of the police personnel, namely Sukumar Ghosh, fell on the ground sustaining bullet injuries. The informant and his party could not immediately remove the injured due to the ongoing indiscriminate firing by the said CRPF personnel. The said CRPF personnel did not even allow Fire Brigade personnel to move into the place of incident for shifting the victim to the hospital. The said CRPF personnel also went to the police station in search of the informant. After sometime, it was found that the injured had succumbed to his injuries at the place of occurrence.

5. On receipt of the information about the incident the Dharmanagar Police Station registered the FIR vide No.63/1996 under Section 302/307/34 of I.P.C. and launched investigation of the case. In the course of investigation, the police recorded the statement of witnesses, seized alamath and also arrested the accused. Thereafter, the police filed the charge-sheet against them.

7. At the trial, the prosecution examined as many as 24 witnesses and exhibited documents along with alamath to bring home the charges against the appellants.

12. Moreover, while it is stated in para 7 of the impugned judgment that by order dated 31.7.2003 the appeal was allowed and the accused acquitted, but it was also stated therein that the reasons will be recorded later. However, the appeal was allowed and all the accused were acquitted by the impugned judgment dated 31.7.2003 containing reasons. We find it difficult to believe that reasons were recorded on 31.7.2003, when an order allowing the appeal (but without giving reasons) was said to have been passed on the same day.

13. We went through the entire record and could not find the date on which the reasons for the impugned judgment were recorded.

14. Thus the learned Judges of the Gauhati High Court appear to have committed two irregularities in delivering the judgment - (i) It passed the operative portion of the judgment in the criminal appeal earlier but purported to record the reasons later and (ii) The date of the judgment giving reasons is mentioned as 31.7.2003, which does not appear to be correct as in para 7 of the judgment it is mentioned that the reasons will be given after 31.7.2003. Thus the impugned judgment appears to be ante dated.

23. It is not necessary for us to further dilate on the impugned judgment of the High Court since we are of the opinion that the same deserves to be set aside and the matter should be considered afresh by the High Court. In the circumstances, we set aside the impugned judgment of the High Court and remand the matter to the High Court which shall hear the appeal afresh and shall consider all the evidence and material on record properly and then pronounce its judgment. Since the matter relates to an incident of 1996, we request the High Court to consider the feasibility of deciding the appeal as expeditiously as possible.

24. Any observation made in this judgment shall not influence the High Court in deciding the appeal.

25. The appeal is allowed. The impugned judgment of the High Court is set aside and the matter is remitted to the High Court for a fresh decision.