Pappu Tiwary vs State of Jharkhand

Court

Supreme Court of India

Date

31 January 2022

Case No.

Criminal Appeal No. 1492 of 2021

Result

Dismissed

Bench

Sanjay Kishan Kaul, M.M. Sundresh

Citation

[2022] 8 S.C.R. 121 : 2022 INSC 118

Headnote

Penal Code, 1860: ss. 302/34 – Arms Act, 1959 – s.27 – Murder – Five people collectively inflicted knife injuries on the deceased after he was shot – Accused P fired at deceased and others inficted knife blows– Conviction and sentence u/s. 302/34, and P additionally charged u/s. 27 of the Arms Act – Upheld by the High Court, except for one who was a minor –In appeal before this Court by the two accused, held: As regards, accused L, on all the aspects, the accused failed to discharge the burden to establish the plea of alibi – It was not a case where opportunity was not granted to him – Thus, the courts below committed no error in rejecting the plea of alibi and there is no merit in his appeal – As regards, accused P, on perusal of the evidence it cannot be said that there are any major discrepancies in the testimony of the eye witnesses as to throw doubt on the prosecution case – Submission that FIR is ante timed, cannot be accepted as sequence of timings and dates pointed out leave no scope of ante dating the FIR – Furthermore, it cannot be said that the mandate of law u/s. 157 Cr.P.C. was not met out – On the intimation of the incident, the fardbeyan was recorded expeditiously, inquest report prepared and the FIR was registered within 25 minutes of the same – Body was sent for post-mortem immediately and the FIR was sent to the court the next morning – It cannot be said that there was any loophole – There was little doubt that there is not a minor but a major difference in recording the number of injuries suffered by the deceased in the inquest report and the post-mortem report, however, this would not be fatal – Inquest report is not substantive evidence and the objective is to find out whether a person had died under suspicious circumstances, what may be the apparent cause of his death – Death was unnatural, it was a homicide case – There were wounds – Two fire arm injuries have been clearly identified with the wounds at the entry and at the exit being identified – Proximity of the time period between the intimation and police proceeding with it right up to the stage when the post-mortem commenced is seen – There was no discrepancy between the medical and ocular evidence – There is no reason why the eye-witness story, which is believable should not be given full credence – Prosecution case established and had not been dented by the accused to cast doubt and entitle them to benefit of doubt.

The Judgment of the Court was delivered by SANJAY KISHAN KAUL, J. Background: 1. On 07.03.2000 at about 1:00 p.m. Vikas Kumar Singh, aged about 22 years was going from his house towards Bhandar for performing physical exercise. It is the case of the prosecution that based on the fardbeyan of his younger brother, Pankaj Kumar Singh which was recorded at Sadar Hospital, Garhwa at 2:00 p.m., when Vikas Kumar Singh reached in front of the house of Ramadhar Ram, all of a sudden six person who were sitting on the road surrounded him; namely Pappu Tiwari (appellant in Crl. A. No.1492/2021), Sanjay

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