946-947 OF 2019 ASHOK KUMAR SINGH CHANDEL….APPELLANT(S) VERSUS STATE OF U.P. THE STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH ETC. THE STATE OF UTTAR PRADESH WITH CRIMINAL APPEAL NOS.
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The judgment of the High Court was rendered in an appeal against acquittal of all the accused by the Trial Court. Further, the acquittal of accused Sahab Singh (A8) for an offence under Section 25 of the Arms Act, 1959 and the acquittal of accused Ashok Singh Chandel(A5) for an offence under Section 30 of the Arms Act was also confirmed by the High Court without any variation. 1030-1031/2019, Uttam Singh (A3) and Pradeep Singh (A4) in Crl. 1269-1270/2019, Ashok Kumar Singh Chandel (A5) in Crl. The group represented by Ashok Chandel (A5) and the group represented by Shukla family were inimically disposed against each other for a long time. 1 First part of the incident: On 26.01.1997, Rajiv Shukla (PW-1) along with his servant Lallan went to the market Mohalla Subhash Bazaar, Kasba, Hamirpur in the evening of 26.01.1997 at around 07.30 PM to buy some hereinafter referred to as ‘FIR’. Due to the firing, Sri Kant (since deceased) and Ved Prakash (since deceased), who were sitting on the rear side of the jonga, received bullet injuries. 2 Rajesh Shukla reversed the jonga from in front of Naseem’s gun shop and started driving it towards the hospital, which is on the west side of the Subhash Bazar Road.
3 Having seen Rajesh Kumar Shukla also succumb to bullet injuries like Gudda and Rakesh Kumar Shukla, hoping to save Srikant Pandey and Ved Prakash, PW-1 put them in the jonga and drove to the hospital. P.N Paya, PW-5, examined the bodies of deceased Rakesh Kumar Shukla, Rajesh Kumar Shukla and Sri Kant Pandey and declared them dead. PW-8 also examined PW-2 at 10 P.M. Vipul and Chandan were also examined at 10.30 P.M., and their injury reports were marked and exhibited as Exbs. He also mentioned about the Assembly Elections, where the Shukla family opposed Shyam Singh (A7) and Ashok Kumar Chandel (A5), leading to a political rivalry.
Thereafter, PW-1 went to the place of occurrence in the jonga, which was driven by Lallan, where he met the Investigating Officer, PW-12. The Investigating Officer, recorded the statement of PW-1 in the presence of an independent witness and also prepared a site map-Exb. The jonga by which PW-1 went to the place of occurrence was also seized along with a piece of footrest which had blood on it, a sample of the broken piece of the front glass of the jonga and some pieces of glass lying at the spot, all of them later marked as -Exb. Upon reaching the place, the police party found Naseem (A6), Shyam Singh (A7), Sahab Singh (A8) and Bhan Singh (A10) trying to flee through the backdoor of Naseem’s house leading to River Betwa. On the very same day, on receiving information regarding the looted rifle of Rajesh Kumar Shukla at the residence of Ashok Kumar Chandel, at Mohalla Vivek Nagar, his house was raided and a country-made pistol and one licensed Double Barrel Breach Loading (DBBL) gun were recovered. Upon receipt of information about the weapons used by Raghuvir (A1) and Dabbu (A2), their Moradabad residence was raided but nothing could be recovered. Ka-58, was filed against 10 accused on 22.02.1997 and the case was set for trial. The Trial Court framed charges against the accused persons on 25.01.2002 under sections 147, 148 and 302 read with section 149, IPC against all the 10 accused and under Sections 25 and 30, Arms Act against Sahab Singh and Ashok Kumar Chandel respectively. While prosecution examined fourteen witnesses being PW-1 to PW-14, the defence examined three witnesses being DW-1 to DW-3. Gupta, Medical Officer, District Hospital, Hamirpur PW-9 Constable, Mahesh Singh, Constable, P.S. DW-1 Lalram Kushwah – Executive Engineer, Electricity Distribution Division, Hamirpur DW-2 Premdas Saloniya, Jailor, Jail, Hamirpur DW-3 Akhilesh Kumar, Constable Clerk, Vigilance Office, Office of the Superintendent of Police, Hamirpur 23.1 Of all the witnesses, the prosecution strongly relied on the evidence of PW-1 and PW-2 who are examined as injured eye-witnesses.
He also detailed the deceased persons in the jonga, including his brother Sri Kant Pandey while naming all the accused and the firing. For determining whether substantial, compelling and sufficient reasons existed for the High Court to reverse a finding of acquittal, we will first scrutinize the judgment of the Trial Court in detail. The conclusions were based on three grounds: 26.2 Firstly, the Trial Court held that the motive based on the alleged involvement of Shyam Singh (A7) in a past murder case in which the deceased and his associates assisted the prosecution is ‘ insufficient’ and ‘ far-fetched’. The Trial Court held that this meeting could not have been expected by the accused party to lay an ambush. Taking into account the time at which PW-1 was medically examined (8.30 PM), followed by his narration of the incident to PW-3 for scribing the tehreer, the Trial Court held that the tehreer could not have been prepared within 10-15 minutes.
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Based on the statement of PW-1 that he left the place of occurrence 10- 15 minutes after the incident and reached the hospital within 3-4 minutes after which he was examined by PW-8 at 8.30 PM, the Trial Court concluded that the incident could have taken place only at 8.00 PM and not 7.30 PM. Trial Court on the testimony of injured eye-witness PW-1: The Trial Court’s reason for rejecting the evidence of PW-1 as an eyewitness is based on its conclusions about the following inconsistencies in his statement: i. The veracity of statement of PW-1 as it contradicts the injuries sustained by him : Based on the statement of PW-1 that he was on the non-driver side of the jonga, the Trial Court came to the conclusion that this version cannot be believed as the injuries sustained by him do not match his own description as if that were true, he would have been in the direct line of firing and could not have escaped with just one bullet injury on his leg.
The veracity of the statement of PW-1 based on injuries sustained by the deceased persons : The Trial Court came to the conclusion that the gun shot injuries on the body of Rakesh Kumar Shukla do not match the description of PW-1. Unnatural behaviour by PW-1 during the second incidence : PW-1’s presence at the second incident was also disbelieved by the Trial Court on the ground that his behaviour is unnatural. Trial Court on the testimony eyewitness, PW-2 : The Trial Court disbelieved the presence of PW-2 at the second place of the incident based on its conclusion that the injury on his body was not that of a firearm. In view of the fact that the Court Witness (CW-1) could not recover any weapon from the Moradabad house, the Trial Court concluded that the whole investigation was mala-fide and was intended to implicate Ashok Kumar Chandel. Recovery of Railway Manarth Card belonging to Ashok Chandel from the place of occurrence : The Trial Court came to the conclusion that the Manarth Card recovered from the place of occurrence had expired way back on 12.01.1994 which is more than three years prior to the incident. We have undertaken a detailed description of the reasons and conclusions adopted by the Trial Court only to see if the High Court while reversing an order of acquittal has sufficient and cogent reasons to interfere with the reasoning of the Trial Court. Motive: The High Court held that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that there existed a motive for the Chandel group for committing the offences against the deceased and their men. High Court’s analysis of the approach adopted by the Trial Court in drawing its conclusions on the evidence of witnesses and the documentary evidence: Apart from reversing the findings given by the Trial Court on specified issues such as motive, the contradiction in the timing of lodging the FIR, its inconsistencies with the tehreer, reliability on the fax message, recoveries of firearms etc., which are being recounted hereinbelow, the High Court noted a fundamental problem.
FIR and Tehreer discrepancies: The High Court was of the opinion that the approach adopted by the Trial Court in construing the tehreer and the FIR were super technical. Testimonies of PW-1 and PW-2: The High Court was of the opinion that the approach adopted by the Trial Court in discarding the evidence of PW-1 and PW-2 was hyper-technical. In this case, Supreme Court had interfered with the order of acquittal by the High Court stating that – “it becomes the duty of the Court to interfere with the acquittal in order to redeem the course of justice…… the High Court has adopted a hyper-technical approach to the entire prosecution case….” 45.
The High Court went on to observe that the Trial Court paid more attention to ascertain as to which particular injury was caused in what sitting position to the injured and the deceased rather than looking at the incident as a whole. Recovery of Weapons: The High Court rejected the findings of the Trial Court with respect to (a) the fax message sent by the Superintendent of Police mentioning the arrest of Sahab Singh with a 0.315 bore rifle as opposed to the recovery memo which mentioned 8×60 bore rifle recovered from Sahab Singh (b) non-examination of a public witness during the arrest and recoveries (c) the search made during the arrest of the accused for the following reasons. Manarth Card Recovery: As regards the recovery of Manarth Card (railway travel card) belonging to Ashok Kumar Chandel is concerned, the Trial Court’s decision to discard the same as the card had expired long before the incident was rejected by the High Court for the reason that it is not uncommon that people carry passes or ID cards even after the date of expiry. Vishvajit Singh, Senior Advocates, followed by Ms. Mishra, Additional Advocate General for the State of U.P. The senior counsels were assisted by S/Shri Shiv Kumar Pandey, Abhay Raj Singh Chandel, Chandrashekhar A. Chakalabbi, Awanish Kumar, Abhinav Garg, D.Girish Kumar, Kumar Vinayakam Gupta, Kartikey Kanojia, M/s Dharmaprabhas Law Associates, AOR, S/Shri Sandeep Jha, Arjun D. Singh, Ashish Singh, Advocates, Dharmendra Kumar Sinha, AOR, Uday Prakash Yadav, Simarjeet Singh Saluja, Ms. Ishita Sinha, S/Shri Rohit Pandey, Murari Tiwari, Advocates, Ramjee Pandey, AOR, Ms.
Manya Hasija, Advocates, S/Shri Prem Sunder Jha, AOR, Pankaj Bist, Advocate, Krishnanand Pandeya, AOR, Manish Kumar, Advocate, Anshuman Srivastava and Shri Naresh Kumar, AOR. Further, as per the evidence of PW-8, the bullet injury on PW-1 was on the upper portion of his left leg, which would only be possible if his back was facing the assailants. Since, PW-1 had stated that he was on the non-driver side and so was deceased Gudda in the jonga who received fatal injuries, it is highly improbable that PW-1 did not receive any injuries in the first incident while being present on the non-driver side.
Therefore, the description of the firearms as deposed by PW-1 cannot be believed. It was deposed by PW-1 that the X-Ray took place at 10 PM however, the X-Ray department closes at 2 PM. If PW-1 left to lodge the FIR at 9 PM and at the same time if the hospital records received the fifth body at 9 PM then how was PW-1 aware of this fact to mention it in the tehreer which was written at 8.30 PM. Mathur to the higher authorities mentions arrest of Sahab Singh on 26.01.1997 with 315 bore rifle and what is shown in the recovery memo is an 8×60 bore rifle. Raval also relied on the evidence of the defence witness DW-1, to discredit prosecution witnesses, PW-1 and PW-2 on the ground that there was no electricity at the place of occurrence when the incident happened.
In light of this, it was argued that Section 149 was not made out by the Appellants as there was no evidence to prove the formation of an unlawful assembly with a common object. Shiv Charan and ors to say that it is incumbent upon the prosecution to show that the person concerned was a member of the unlawful assembly at the time of the commission of the offence. He also touched upon the issue relating to the delay in FIR, the fax message sent by the Superintendent of Police and the recovery of Manarth card bearing the name of Ashok Kumar Chandel near Naseem’s shop and the evidence of DW-1 establishing that there was no electricity at the time of the incident. Basava Prabhu Patil, learned Senior Advocate, appeared on behalf of Sahab Singh (A8) submits that his client’s name appears in the FIR along with the gunner of Chandel who was also cited. Patil also questioned the veracity of the evidence of PW-1 and PW-2. Patil submitted that though his client was acquitted of the charge under Section 25 of the Arms Act, in view of the fact that the recovery was not based on any independent witness he was convicted under Section 302, IPC along with all others only on the basis of evidence given by PW-1. The learned ASG commenced her submission with the occurrence of the incident on 26.01.1997 which is not disputed. Learned ASG referred to the evidence of PW-1 in detail and sought to correct the statements made by the witness with the evidence on record. The learned ASG concludes by saying that the High Court has not committed any error, in fact or in law while reversing the decision of the Trial Court. Sonia Mathur learned Senior Counsel supporting the learned ASG has submitted that there is sufficient proof of the presence of PW-1 in the first as well as the second incident. These arguments relate to the discrepancies in the timing of lodging of the FIR and contradictions about the presence of PW-1 at the place of incidence because of the evidence relating to (a) the bullet marks on the jonga (b) the physical position of PW-1 and the injuries sustained by him and the deceased at the time of the incident (c) the contradictions arising out of the timing of X-Ray reports and issuance of the Bed Head Ticket (d) and the absence of electricity at the time of the incident. This is the first preliminary submission and it is based on a principle laid down by this Court that in an appeal against acquittal, the criminal appellate court will not interfere with the acquittal unless there are substantial and compelling reasons. Such phraseologies are more in the nature of “flourishes of language” to emphasise the reluctance of an appellate court to interfere with acquittal than to curtail the power of the court to review the evidence and to come to its own conclusion.” It is sufficient to note the principle laid down in the Constitution Bench of this Court in M.G. State of Punjab [(1953) SCR 418] it was observed that the interference of the High Court in an appeal against the order of acquittal would be justified only if there are “very substantial and compelling reasons to do so”. State of Punjab [AIR 1962 SC 439] and so, it is not necessary that before reversing a judgment of acquittal, the High Court must necessarily characterise the findings recorded therein as perverse…” 76. The trial court’s acquittal bolsters the presumption that he is innocent. There must also be substantial and compelling reasons for holding that the trial court was wrong. A number of instances arise in which the appellate court would have “very substantial and compelling reasons” to discard the trial court’s decision.
The Appellate Court must always give proper weight and consideration to the findings of the trial court. As a result, accused Shyam Singh, Ashok Kumar Chandel and Raghuvir were on hostile terms with the Shukla family. I had long political enmity with Ashok Chandel. Ashok Chandel used to contest election for MLA. Ashok Chandel and Raghuvir Singh and other had favoured Shyam Singh. Naseem was the manager of Islamiya Inter College, Hamirpur. Assuming that the prosecution evidence was not sufficient or cogent enough for a motive to be spelt out of it, the fact that the prosecution was not able to discover such an impelling motive would not reflect upon the credibility of a witness, proved to be a reliable eyewitness….. It is also settled law that the motive loses all its importance in a case where direct evidence of eyewitnesses is available, because even if there may be a very strong motive for the accused persons to commit a particular crime, they cannot be convicted if the evidence of eyewitnesses is not convincing.
These decisions have made a clear distinction between cases where the prosecution relies upon circumstantial evidence on the one hand and those where it relies upon the testimony of eyewitnesses on the other………. In view of the evidence on the aspect relating to motive, coupled with the clear position of law with respect to the relevance and weightage of motive in cases of evidence of direct injured eyewitness to the incident, the conclusion of the Trial Court that the case of the prosecution fumbles as it failed to prove the motive is incorrect. With respect to the first event the Trial Court held: “This place of occurrence has not been challenged by the defence and by the questions by Naseem himself during the cross examination of witnesses it is clear that the incidence had taken place.” Similarly, the Trial Court recorded the following with respect to the second event of the incident in the following manner: “The second place of incident has been said to be occurred in front of the house of Parmanand Pandit and as per site map [Exh. words have been shown by the investigation officer in the site map [Exh-A-25] after inspection of the place of occurrence, on which places it is said that bullet cartridges total 12 have been found, out of which 6 are to said of 12 bore and 6 of brass. He has not indicated as to which bullet cartridges was found from which place separately. It is after this that PW-1 left for the police station at around 09:00 PM to lodge the FIR which came to be registered at 09.10 PM. Ka-18) sent by the hospital to the police station at 9PM, which in turn mentions only four dead bodies and two injured persons (ii) it could not have been possible for PW-3 to write such a long tehreer and that too without any mistake in a span of 15-20 minutes before PW-1 proceeded to the police station (iii) it was also urged that, there were certain omissions made in the FIR which was copied from the tehreer and hence, there were material discrepancies in both the documents (iv) finally, according to PW-1’s Bed Head Ticket received from the hospital, the discharge timing is mentioned to be 9 AM on 27.01.1997 on the next day and therefore he could not have lodged the FIR at 09.10 PM on 26.01.1997. Firstly, it can be observed from the evidence of the doctor, PW-8 that he examined the dead bodies and the two injured namely, PW-1 and Hardayal and prepared a police memo to that effect. I had prepared this in my handwriting and signature and it was mentioned that dead bodies of five persons have been brought in this hospital and two injured have also come, whose names are Rajiv Shukla S/o Sh.
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He has also stated that from the hospital he did not take the jonga to the police station to lodge the FIR, instead, he went by autorickshaw. This was because one dead body was still in the jonga and was surrounded by female members of the family. There was no basis for the Trial Court to assume that this document could not have been written in 15-20 minutes, particularly in view of the evidence of PW-3 who is stated to be an experienced scribe. It was therefore necessary for the High Court to interfere with the glaring mistakes committed by the Trial Court. The variations indicated in the tehreer and the FIR, as well as the argument of improbability based on a minute-by-minute construct by the learned counsels for the Appellants, can under no circumstance become fatal to the acceptance of the tehreer and the FIR. section would indicate that all inconsistent statements are not sufficient to impeach the credit of the witness….
Presence of PW-1 at the place of incidence 102. Yet another substantive argument advanced on behalf of the Appellants is that the presence of PW-1 at the scene of the offence is doubtful. PW-4 states in the report that the jonga had a hole in the windscreen window and multiple holes in the back side of the driver’s seat. Holes of curtains, except one or two, remaining holes’are inside the fold of curtain. We have carefully perused the seizure memo of the jonga which clearly describes “kai jagah par goliyon ke nishan hai”, meaning thereby that there are many bullet marks found on the jonga. Further, the inspection report prepared by PW-4 on 25.02.2002 also mentions about the existence of multiple bullet marks on the jonga. I had seen only one hole in the glass (wind shield). At the first incident, from the testimony of PW-1 as well as the site plan drawn by PW-12, PW-1 was initially standing in front of the jonga when he stopped to speak to the deceased Rakesh Shukla. the fact that the Jonga was standing exactly in the mid of the road but not that we were standing on the right side of the road. It is at this point of time that the firing started, that is when PW-1 was on the non-driver side. It is not in dispute that PW- 1 is on the non-driver side of the vehicle and when the firing began from Naseem’s gun shop which is in the south side of the jonga. So far as deceased Rajesh Shukla is concerned, he proactively got out of the jonga and took a position to fire at the assailants. It was, therefore compelling for the High Court to interfere and correct the glaring mistake of the Trial Court. A recent decision of this Court recounted a chaotic situation like this by reviewing the existing case laws on the subject.
State of Maharashtra [Narayan Chetanram Chaudhary v. Yet another argument raised by the Appellants is that, as per the injury report of PW-1, he received one bullet injury on the upper portion of his left thigh. The Trial Court committed a serious error in relying on the evidence of PW-9 for discarding the entire evidence of PW-1. PW-1 and PW-12, both depose that PW-1 went back to the hospital from the place of occurrence due to the pain of his injury. It was also stated that the entry of treatment of the victims was made in the accidental register instead of the medico legal register as the police did not accompany PW-1 and Hardayal. When police has not come with the injured and injured has come, neither gives application nor deposits fees and has asid to do the examination then under compulsion we write injuries in the accidental register after conducting his examination. It has also been admitted by the PW-7, the Radiologist, under whose supervision the X-Ray was done that the X-Ray was conducted on the reference of the Emergency Medical Officer, PW-8 who sent a reference slip for the same. On that day under my supervision the X-Ray of the right thigh, along with left thigh and left knee of injured Rajiv Shukla S/o Sh. In the X-ray one small round metal non-transparent (torn paper) was seen in the right thigh, left thigh and left knee alongwith leg. The last attempt to persuade the court to discard the evidence of PW-1 is based on an argument that during the period commencing from 07.30 PM to 08.45 PM, there was no electricity at the scene of the offence. It was observed that DW-1 has admitted to the fact that although there was an electricity cut between 07.30 PM to 08.45 PM, he was not sure if the place of occurrence, i.e., Subhash Market was affected by the same. He went on to state that there were total of three phases connected to Akil Tiraha, and out of those three phases, two continued to remain operational despite the breakdown. As against the reasoning and the conclusions drawn by the High Court, the Trial Court has simply referred to the evidence of DW-1 stating that there was no electricity and immediately concluded that the testimonies of PW-1 and PW-2 are not trustworthy. We have also seen that the injuries on the body of PW-1 and that of the deceased persons co-relate with the testimony establishing PW-1’s presence at the scene of occurrence.
While the X-Ray report described the injury on PW-2 as “one small metallic opaque radio shadow is seen in left leg” corroborating the same, Dr. It is after the second incident when he also received an injury that PW-1 asked him to go home and check on the children, Chandan and Vipul. I cannot tell the name of the person, with whom Chandan and Vipul were send the home. While PW-1 was taking PW-2’s brother to the hospital it is natural that PW-2 would take care of the other emergencies of checking on the children who also received minor injuries. Discrepancies in the FIR and the Fax sent by the Superintendent of Police 136. The learned counsels have referred to a fax message said to have been sent from the office of the Superintendent of Police (SP) to the superiors informing them about the occurrence of this very incident. The circumstances in which the fax never formed a part of the investigation and that it emanated only with its introduction by DW-3 examined on 27.06.2002, causes much suspicion about the fax as well as its This principle has been reiterated in a number of decisions of this court in Leela Ram (Dead) through Duli Chand v. In conclusion, we reject the fax as well as the submissions based on the contents of the fax for the reason that firstly, the timings as indicated in the FIR stand confirmed by other oral and documentary evidence as discussed earlier. …. In cases of defective investigation the court has to be circumspect in evaluating the evidence but it would not be right in acquitting an accused person solely on account of the defect; to do so would tantamount to playing into the hands of the investigating officer if the investigation is designedly defective…..” 141. If primacy is given to such designed or negligent investigations or to the omissions or lapses by perfunctory investigation, the faith and confidence of the people in the criminal justice administration would be eroded. which resulted in defective investigation, there is a legal obligation on the part of the court to examine the prosecution evidence dehors such lapses, carefully, to find out whether the said evidence is reliable (1995) 5 SCC 518.
He argued that the prosecution has failed to prove that there was an unlawful assembly and that Appellant No.2 was one of the persons constituting the unlawful assembly. The submission proceeds on a premise that a prior formation of an unlawful assembly with a common object is a must and should have been a condition precedent for roping the accused within the fold of Section 149, IPC. ….It is incorrect to claim that prior formation of an unlawful assembly with a common object is a must and should have been found as a condition precedent before roping the accused within the fold of Section 149 IPC. “Common object” is different from a “common intention” as it does not require a prior concert and a common meeting of minds before the attack. It is not necessary under law that in all cases of unlawful assembly, with an unlawful common object, the same must be translated into action or be successful. The second incident is vouchsafed by PW-1 as well as PW-2, who have reached Parma Pandit’s house as the deceased party alighted the children Vipul and Chandan and turned the jonga towards the hospital. , at this stage: “ 14…..Where common object of an unlawful assembly is not proved, the accused persons cannot be convicted with the help of Section 149. It may be formed at any stage by all or a few members of the assembly and the other members may just join and adopt it.
Members of an unlawful assembly may have community of object up to a certain point beyond which they may differ in their objects and the knowledge, possessed by each member of what is likely to be committed in prosecution of their common object which may vary not only according to the information at his command, but also according to the extent to which he shares the community of object, and as a consequence of this the effect of Section 149 IPC may be different on different members of the same assembly.” 146. Having considered the matter in detail, we are of the opinion that the High Court has examined the issue from all perspectives and in great detail before reversing the decision of the Trial Court. Secondly, it is submitted that the recovery of the card from the place of the incident is doubtful as it was sealed and stamped separately from all other material objects that were recovered from the place of the incident. The Investigating Officer, PW-12, found the Railway Manarth card at the scene of the offence. So far as the submission relating to the irregularity in the recovery and the marking of the Manarth card is concerned, we are of the opinion that there is no reason for the IO to plant the card there, as there is no past enmity between him and Ashok Kumar Chandel. SP, Sukhram Sonkar, PW-14 stated that PW-12 had in his statement before the CBCID stated that one rifle along with 18 bullets, ten from the belt and eight from the butt cover of the rifle, were recovered from Sahab Singh (A8).
The conclusions of the High Court are as under: “We find that confusion probably occurred in the mind of the trial court that the 315 bore rifle is different rifle than 8×60 bore rifle which is fallacious. Smith on Mauser Rifle and Pistols provides a detailed description of an 8×60 sporting rifle under the chapter ‘Mauser Sporting Rifles’. The website of Directorate of Ordnance (Coordination and Services) where 0.315 bore rifle is also described as an 8mm rifle. 154 Aftab Ali along with Jeep and Driver Ram Kishan came at the police station and produced four accused persons Naseem Ahmad, Sahab Singh, Man Singh, then said Man Singh, Shyam Singh in the police station. Constable Aftab Ali, PW-11 in his evidence stated that: “…Four persons namely Sahab Singh, Naseem, Mansingh, Shyamsingh were about to go out from the door there that we surrounded and caught them. When the SHO took the personal search of all four then one rifle and green colour cartridge belt recovered from the possession of Sahab Singh, which had 10 cartridges and nothing recovered from any other.
When personal search of above three accused persons made as per rules then nothing recovered from the possession of the accused Naseem, Shyam Singh. (illegible)
Case Title: ASHOK KUMAR SINGH CHANDEL Vs. STATE OF U.P. (2022 INSC 1164)
Case Number: Crl.A. No.-000946-000947 / 2019
