Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Mar 10: High Court has upheld acquittal of accused, one of them a deaf and dumb, in a murder case, observing that police story to be a concoction.
The case of the prosecution was that one of the accused Mohammad Bashir alias Kalla (deaf and dumb) was a bachelor living separately from his brothers. Deceased Fazal Hussain noticing Mohammad Bashir to be poor, as a good neighbour, used to provide him food, clothes which gave rise to an apprehension in the mind of Bashir's brother, Abdul Rehman and nephew Iftikhar Hussain, that Fazal Hussain may grab his property of Mohammad Bashir (deaf and dumb), as a result of which, they hatched a conspiracy.
The prosecution said that Rehman on 22-12-2005 went to the house of Fazal and asked him to move with him up to the house of Bashir. While moving to the place, accused Rehman, Bashir alias Kalla sons of Mohammad Din and Iftikhar son of Rehman, caught hold of Fazal and started beating him. Kalla caused injury in the head of the deceased with a blow of an axe while as Rehman and Iftikhar caused injuries on the head of the deceased with stones, prosecution said.
After killing Fazal while they were carrying the body of the deceased to a far-off place from the house of Kalla, the witnesses saw the same, the prosecution said further. The accused left the dead body and ran away. On arrest of Bashir, his disclosure statement, as per his gestures and signs, was recorded and it was that accused Kalla had said that the axe with which he had injured the head of the deceased was concealed by him in his house. Based on that disclosure, the axe was recovered and seized as the weapon of offence. One blood stained shirt which was worn by the Kalla on the date of occurrence was recovered and sent for chemical analysis to the FSL, the prosecution added.
"From the perusal of records and the evidence, it appears that the investigating agency while concluding investigation has simply shown to have solved a murder case by implicating the respondents (accused). The theory set up by the prosecution at the very first blush appears to be a concoction," a division bench of Chief Justice Badar Durez Ahmad and Justice Mohammad Yaqoob Mir said and upheld the acquittal of the accused. The court cited numerous reasons to declare prosecution story to be concoction.
The court said: "The trial court has rightly noticed that where there is considerable interval between arrest of the accused and the discovery of weapon of offence, no reliance can be placed on such suspicious evidence of recovery, then has rightly noticed that the prosecution has tried to build up the case on the disclosure statement of the accused Mohammad Bashir which on the face of it appears to be an afterthought." |
