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2. In the morning of 30.1.1996 Renu was found lying dead on her cot in the house of Ramesh. When the information of the death of Renu reached her mother Batashi Devi, she came from her village Hahi to village Muradipur and on being informed that her daughter had died in the night due to paralysis she buried the dead body by the side of the Manorama river with the help of some villagers. Thereafter, it appears that Smt. Batashi heard a rumour that her little girl had not died from paralysis but had actually been raped and murdered by the respondent Ramesh. This prompted Smt. Batashi to return to village Muradipur where she was informed by Shitla Prd. Verma, Jata Shanker and other persons of the village Muradipur that her daughter had been raped and murdered by Ramesh. Thereupon with the aid of the village zamindar Kunwar Dhruv Narain Singh she proceeded to lodge a report at police station Haraiya on 2.2.1996 at 6.10 pm, which inter alia contained the above mentioned disclosures, and expressed a suspicion that her daughter had been raped and murdered, and for ascertainment of the truth it was necessary that her daughter's dead body be exhumed from the ground and postmortem be conducted on it.

15. Basically learned Counsel for the respondent reiterated the grounds for acquittal mentioned in the order of the learned sessions judge acquitting the respondent. The grounds for acquittal were:

(1) The four witnesses who were examined in order to prove the prosecution allegations that they had seen the accused Ramesh carrying Renu in his lap prior to the incident, viz. PW 3 Smt. Sumitra Devi, PW 4 Smt. Urmila Devi, PW 6 Smt. Hira Devi and PW 9 Smt. Sona Devi have failed to support the prosecution case and have stated in Court that on learning about the death of Renu they reached her grandmother's house where they found her dead body lying and learnt that her death was the result of paralysis. According to the learned judge, nothing has been elicited from the witnesses from which it could be concluded that they had turned hostile.

The Crucial Circumstance

16. We have carefully perused and analysed the evidence on record and the grounds for acquittal and the arguments of the learned Counsel for the respondent and the learned AGA.

17. The basic fallacy in the order of acquittal results from failure to appreciate the importance of the crucial circumstance in this case. There can be no denial of the fact that after the incident the mother of Renu Smt. Batashi Devi, PW 2, was called from her village Hahi and on being informed by the villagers that the little girl had died in the night as a result of paralysis, possibly due to cold she had proceeded to bury the child on the river bank with the help of the villagers. We think that the version given by this witness is very natural and believable that on the next date after the incident she heard some rumours that the accused had committed rape with her daughter and which had caused her death. After two days, i.e. on 2.2.1996, she went to the house of Dhruv Narain Singh. There Jata Shanker Singh and Shitla Verma informed her that on the night of the incident at about 9 pm the accused was sitting under a tree along with Renu. On this Dhruv Narain Singh called for Ramesh who confessed that he had done a very wrong thing leading to the death of Renu and began pleading for forgiveness. Thereafter on her suggestion Dhruv Narain wrote out the report which was lodged at P.S. Haraiya. On the basis of her FIR, which was lodged at the police station on 2.2.1996 at 6.10 p.m. the body of the deceased was dug out on 3.2.1996 at 9 or 9.30 a.m. on the orders of SDM, Haraiya. As pointed out above the corpse clearly showed marks of rape and injuries which had resulted in the death of Renu. There is not even a whisper or suggestion that the FIR was not lodged on the date alleged. Also the fact that the deceased had died as a result of the rape committed on her by the accused, was mentioned in the FIR, and which was in existence even prior to the retrieval of the dead body from under the ground. This fact was the most important circumstance which clinchingly established that the two witnesses PW 7 Jata Shanker and PW 8 Shitla Verma had actually last seen the deceased along with the accused and also the truth and reliability of the extra judicial confession wherein the accused had admitted to have committed rape on the girl, because this information came to light at a time when the body was lying under the ground. It may be noted that Smt. Batashi had earlier been made to understand that her daughter had died as a result of paralysis. In the light of this crucial circumstance we find that the conclusions of the trial judge for acquitting the accused cannot be sustained.

18. So far as the first point relating to women witnesses PWs 3, 4,6 and 9, not supporting the prosecution version is concerned, we think that the learned judge is wrong in the finding that these witnesses have not turned hostile. They had in fact been declared hostile and were cross-examined. So far as PW 3 Smt. Sumia Devi and PW 4 Urmila Devi are concerned, we find that both gave a deliberate ambiguous answer that they did not know whether in the night of the incident Renu was sleeping with her grandmother in her own house or in the house of the accused Ramesh. They did not have the courage to state clearly that the deceased and her grandmother were sleeping in her grandmother Smt. Phulpatta's house. Realizing the absurdity of the claim, these two witnesses did not have even have the courage to state that the girl had died due to paralysis. So far as witnesses PW 6 Hira Devi and PW 9 Smt. Sona Devi are concerned, they again appear to have resiled from their 161 Cr.P.C. statements and to have reiterated that PW 3 Smt. Sumiya and PW 4 Smt. Urmila were not even examined by the investigating officer and probably the deceased had died as a result of paralysis. We know this paralysis theory has been completely demolished by the postmortem examination report which clearly shows the cause of death of the deceased to be injuries and rape. We, therefore, think that for some extraneous reasons these four witnesses are not at all interested in speaking the truth and have made up their mind to protect the accused. It is quite possible that the witnesses might have been won over by the father of the accused Manteku who had a government peon's job and who has admittedly given money to the defence witness to set up a beetle shop and we would not be surprised if Manteku had bought out these poor Harijan women witnesses as well. We, therefore, think that the inference of the learned trial judge that there was nothing to suggest that these witnesses had turned hostile was arbitrary and perverse.