Supreme Court: Navin Sinha, J. delivered the judgment for the Full Court comprising of Ranjan Gogoi, R. Banumathi, JJ. and himself, wherein the appeal filed by a murder convict against his conviction was partly allowed.
The appellant was convicted for murdering his neighbor. The facts were that the appellant had an altercation with the deceased due to loud playing of tape recorder. The appellant was irked by the loud noise. A verbal argument ensued. The appellant rushed across to his house, came back with a sword and delivered a single blow to the deceased in the rib cage area and then ran away threatening to see him later. The deceased succumbed to the injury the same day. The trial court acquitted the appellant but he was convicted by the Uttaranchal High Court for the offence punishable under Section 302. Aggrieved by the same, the appellant filed the instant appeal.
The Supreme Court considered the factual matrix of the case and held that in the entirety of the evidence, the conviction of the appellant under Section 302 was liable to be modified. The Court reached a conclusion that the occurrence took place in the heat of the moment. It was noted that genesis of the occurrence was a single assault. Moreover, duration of the entire episode was less than 2 minutes, which lends credence to the view that the assault was made without pre-meditation at the spur of time. Thus, it was not safe to convict the appellant for murder. However, he had knowledge that such assault was likely to cause death. In such circumstances, the Court was of the view that the conviction of the appellant was liable to be modified from Section 302 to Section 304 Part II. The appeal was, thus, partly allowed. [Deepak v. State of U.P.,2018 SCC OnLine SC 770, decided on 01-08-2018]