Madhya Pradesh High Court: A Division Bench comprising of Rajendra Kumar Srivastava and S.K. Gangele, JJ. allowed the appeal and acquitted the appellant who was convicted under Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC.
The appellant was convicted for the murder of the deceased and awarded life sentence. It was alleged by the PWs 2 and 3, the brother and mother of the deceased, that the appellant had a farsa with which the deceased was attacked and he, therefore, died on the spot. The order of conviction and sentence passed by the trial court was challenged in the instant appeal.
The High Court noted that the eye-witnesses had deposed that the appellant was armed with a farsa and had inflicted injuries upon the deceased. However, in the postmortem report, there were no signs of any such injury that could have been caused by a sharp weapon. The doctor, who conducted the postmortem also deposed that he did not notice any such injury. Relying on Mahavir Singh v. State of M.P., (2016) 10 SCC 220, the Court held that where the medical evidence goes so far that it completely rules out the possibility of the ocular evidence being true, then such ocular evidence may be disbelieved. Holding thus, the conviction and sentence of the appellant under Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC was set aside. The appeal was thus, allowed. [Shiv Prasad Kol v. State of M.P., 2018 SCC OnLine MP 414, dated 05-07-2018]