- Court
- Supreme Court of India
- Decided
- 6 May 2009
- Bench
- Arijit Pasayat, Asok Kumar Ganguly
- Case no.
- Criminal Appeal No. 189 of 2003
- Result
- Appeal allowed.
Headnote
Penal Code, 1860 - ss. 366 A and 376 (2) - Abduction and rape - By five persons - Appellant accused convicted with two co-accused, the other two having absconded - Held: Since the victim in her statement in the court categorically stated that she did not recognize the appellant-accused, he is liable to be acquitted.
Headnote as published in the Digital Supreme Court Reports by the Supreme Court of India. Paragraph references point to the judgment below.
Judgment
DR. ARIJIT PASAYAT, J. 1. Challenge in this appeal is to the correctness of the Judgment rendered by a Learned Single Judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court dismissing the appeal filed by the present appellant who was appellant in Criminal Appeal No. 2750/98 before the High Court. The present appellant was convicted after alleged commission of rape and abduction in terms of Section 366 A and 376 (2) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC). Out of the five accused persons tried, two absconded and the rest three were convicted by the Trial Court. Trial Court imposed sentence of 10 years for each of the concerned, he preferred an appeal, as also two co-accused who were convicted by the Trial Court.
¶2So far as the appellant is concerned his primary stand before the Trial Court and the High Court was that the prosecutrix having not identified him to be one of the persons y who subjected her to rape, his conviction cannot be maintained.
The High Court did not deal with this aspect but confirmed the conviction and sentences as imposed by the Trial Court. In support of the learned counsel for the appellant submitted that in the examination in chief itself the victim (PW-6) stated as follows:-
'I recognise the accused Raju and Pancham Present in the 'y Court. The witness after seeing the accused Jakir states
that "I do not recognise him because I have never been him"
¶3Learned counsel for the State referred to letter parte of the evidence where in generalised manner the role of the five accused persons was described.
¶4Both the Trial Court and the High Court ignored the statement of the victim who in court categorically stated that she did not recognise him as she had never seen him.
¶5That being so the conviction so far as the present appellant is concerned cannot be maintained. The appeal is allowed. The bail warrant executed to give effect to the order of bail in terms of the order of 10.2.2003 shall stand discharged.
Case details
Arising from
CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION: Criminal Appeal No. 189 of 2003.
From the Judgment and Order dated 04.03.2002 of the High Court of Madhya Pradesh, Jabalpur in Criminal Appeal No. 2750 of 1998.
Appearances
M. Qamaruddin, for the Appellant.
C.D. Singh for the Respondent.
Source: Supreme Court of India, Digital Supreme Court Reports, via the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open dataset (CC BY 4.0). Text was extracted from the official PDF and may contain conversion errors. Check the official PDF before relying on it.