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| Murder accused gets life punishment | | | Early Times Reporter
JAMMU|SEP 15- Principal Sessions Judge Jammu JR Kotwal today awarded life-imprisonment to accused Dev Raj r/o Jafri Chak under the police station Kana-Chak for committing murder of Rashpal Chand on November 1, 1995.
According to the prosecution story, Dev Raj had borrowed Rs 12000 from the deceased and on November 1, 1995 the deceased had gone to the house of the accused at village Jafri Chak to collect his money. However, the accused instead of paying money to the deceased shot him dead with a pistol to evade the payment of money to him. On the written complaint of father of deceased, police registered a case u/s 302 RPC r/w section 3/25 Arms Act and started investigation. During the investigation accused was arrested on November 9, 1995 on the basis of his disclosure statement revolver was recovered. After completion of the investigation, challan was presented in Court of jurisdiction.
Principal Sessions Judge in his 73 page judgment, after hearing Public Prosecutor Mr. EA Tak appearing for the state and accused convict Dev Raj was produced in custody, observed that in the opinion of the Court in the said case the consequence of failure to produce a particular eye-witness or eye-witnesses would differ from the case to case. In the present case Santosh Devi w/o of the accused and Swarn Lal alias Channi nephew of the accused, their absence in the witness box in no case can be said to have caused prejudice to the accused. It cannot be believed that had they been produced in the witness box, they would have spoken such a truth, which might have exonerated the accused. If it was to be so, the accused was well in a position to produce them in defence being his kin. Prosecution stand that they were hostile witnesses and cannot be said to be unjustified. The prosecution should have faced the challenge by putting them in the witness box. Court is thus not inclined to accept defence contention that absence of these two witnesses before the Court has either demolished the prosecution case or prejudice to the accused. The prosecution can well rely upon the circumstantial evidence. The falls explanation tendered by the accused provides an additional circumstance to chain of the circumstances. A safe inference to be drawn therefore was that accused and none else had shot dead the deceased inside his house, With these observations Court convicted the accused u/s 302 RPC.
On the issue of Arms Act, Principal Sessions Judge further observed that the charge u/s 3/25 Arms Act is not proved beyond doubt even though prosecution evidence proves that a pistol was recovered on the disclosure statement of the accused, but the investigating officer has failed to prove as to whether it was licensed weapon belonging to the accused or someone else or unlicensed weapon, also it could not be proved that it was the weapon used for the commission of the murder by the accused of the deceased. In such circumstances, mere recovery of the weapon on the disclosure of accused, is not sufficient to constitute offence u/s 3/25 Arms Act as such accused is acquitted of the said offence u/s 3/25 Arms Act.
With these observations Court awarded life imprisonment to the accused Dev Raj s/o Sukh Ram r/o Jafer Chak Tehsil Jammu who was facing trial for the last 12 years and fine Rs 5000.
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