Delhi High Court: The Court recently in a Criminal Appeal considered the mitigating circumstances to award an appropriate sentence to the accused-appellant. The facts of the case were that the accused was charged under Section 307 IPC. In Section 313 CrPC statement, the appellant denied his involvement in the crime and pleaded false implication. However, he was convicted by the trial court.
Before the High Court, APP pleaded that the appreciation of evidence and witness by the trial court was not appropriate and crime weapon allegedly recovered was not identified by the victim in his court deposition. The appellant in his testimony had named the appellant as accused. But the Crime weapon allegedly recovered in this case was not identified by the victim in his Court deposition.
The Court denied discrediting the statement of the victim merely because he had not identified the weapon. The Court went on to discuss the gravity of evidence that an injured victim’s statement possesses and accordingly cited various case laws. It observed that in State of Uttar Pradesh v. Naresh, (2011) 4 SCC 324, Supreme Court had averred that the testimony of an injured witness is accorded a special status in law as it is difficult to believe that he would spare the actual offender in order to falsely implicate someone else.
Considering the precedents, the Court decided to rely on the victim’s statement and upheld the conviction. However, with regard to the sentence, the Court took into account the mitigating circumstances such as that the appellant had a younger brother and old aged parents to take care of them, that he was a first time offender and was aged 25 years of age at the time of commission of offence. Accordingly, the Judge modified the sentence of 7 years RI along with a fine of Rs. 50,000 as compensation to victim to the extent that RI shall be for five years with fine Rs. 50,000 and default sentence for non-payment of fine would be SI for two months. [Jitender Khari v. State, 2017 SCC OnLine Del 6953, decided on 09.02.2017]
