Vijay Pandurang Thakre & Ors vs State Of Maharashtra

2. The appellants are the residents of Village Badegaon, Taluka Saoner, Nagpur. Victims of the said crime are also residents of the same village. Persons belonging to the victim's group (known as Deshmukh Group) as well as those who are accused persons (known as Choudhary Group) are the two rival political groups active in the village politics. On 24.10.2002, elections for Village Panchayat, Badegaon took place. The appellants were supporting Samata Party and four of their candidates got elected in the said elections. On the other hand, Deshmukh Group was representing Shetkari Shet Majoor Party and five of their candidates were elected in the said elections. Shetkari Shet Majoor Party was led by Vijay Deshmukh and Samata Party was led by Bhujangrao Choudhary. Two days after the elections i.e. on 26.10.2002, the incident in question took place.

As per the prosecution, members of the group of accused persons hatched a conspiracy to eliminate leading members of Deshmukh family for taking revenge of their defeat in Gram Panchayat election and in furtherance of their common object, committed the murder of Ashok Deshmukh, and attempted to commit murder of Vilas Deshmukh, Vivek Deshmukh (PW-9 and PW-8 respectively), assaulted Dinesh Deshmukh, Arun Deshmukh, Prafulla Deshmukh, Sau. Kalpana Deshmukh and Smt. Kausabai Choudhary (PW-6, PW-7, PW-13, PW-10 and PW-11 respectively), pelted stones on the houses of Deorao Nakhale and Bhimrao Nakhale (PW-12 and PW-16 respectively) and damaged the scooter of PW-4 Sushil Deshmukh. The incident was witnessed by seven injured witnesses and four eyewitnesses.

The prosecution examined, altogether, 26 witnesses. Out of these, PW-6, PW- 7, PW-8, PW-9, PW-10, PW-11 and PW-13 were the injured eyewitnesses and PW- 2, PW-4, PW-5 and PW-18 were eyewitnesses who did not suffer any injury in the incident. Other witnesses are the doctors (who examined the injured persons and conducted postmortem of the deceased Ashok Deshmukh), Investigating Officer, Executive Magistrate, Panch and other witnesses. On the other hand, defence examined 16 witnesses in all.

It may be mentioned that in all 30 persons were charged under the various Sections mentioned above. As pointed out above, after analysing the evidence of the prosecution as well as that of the defence and other material produced on record, the learned Additional Sessions Judge convicted accused Nos. 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 16 to 25 and 28 to 30 for various offences giving different sentence ranging from one month to six months under Sections 324, 336, 427, 506-II and 148 IPC. Insofar as conviction under Section 307 read with Section 149 IPC is concerned, rigorous imprisonment for five years was awarded and for offence punishable under Section 302 read with Section 149 IPC, life imprisonment was inflicted upon the aforesaid convicted persons. The remaining accused persons were acquitted. Findings of the trial court are summarised by the High Court in the impugned judgment in the following manner:

If these three elements are satisfied, then only a conviction under Section 149, I.P.C., may be substantiated, and not otherwise. None of the Sections 147, 148 and 149 applies to a person who is merely present in any unlawful assembly, unless he actively participates in the rioting or does some overt act with the necessary criminal intention or shares the common object of the unlawful assembly.