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The judgment dated 09.03.2016 passed by the learned I Additional District and Sessions Judge, Coimbatore in Crl.A.No.40 of 2015 upholding and confirming the judgment dated 29.01.2015 passed by the learned Judicial Magistrate No.VI, Coimbatore in CC.No.642 of 2012, convicting the petitioner for the offence under Section 379 I.P.C. and thereby sentencing him to undergo three years rigorous imprisonment, has been questioned in this Criminal Revision, at the instance of the petitioner / accused.

2.Briefly stated the prosecution case is that on 13.09.2012 at about 08.00 pm, P.W.1/complainant along with her son and P.W.2/wife of the complainant's brother had boarded the Train going to Nagercoil at Coimbatore Railway Station; they were allotted with seats bearing Nos.35, 38 and 40 in S4 coach of Covai-Nagercoil Express Train No.16610; as soon as they sat down, P.W.2 went to toilet and her son was lying on his berth and P.W.1 took the water bottle from her handbag and kept it in the seat, but it fell down; when she bent down to take the same, a person had taken her handbag and ran away from the train; on seeing the missing of her handbag, P.W.1 asked the other passengers, http://www.judis.nic.in who replied that they did not know about the same; she got down from the coach and saw a person wearing blue and red colour 'T' shirt running in the platform carrying her handbag; immediately, she shouted 'thief', 'thief'; on hearing the same, the railway police tried to catch him, but the accused escaped; and thereafter, P.W.1 and P.W.2 got down from the train and went to Coimbatore Railway police station, where P.W.1 lodged Ex.P1 complaint, with regard to theft of her handbag (MO1), which contains a leap phone (MO2), SBI Bank ATM card (MO3) and cash of Rs.10,200/- (MO4). P.W.6/Sub Inspector of Police, received the said complaint and registered it as Ex.P4 FIR No.1764/2012 and informed the same to all the police officers, who were on beat duty. On the same day night, P.W.3/Coimbatore Railway Police, who was on his way to home at Tiruppur, was travelling in Kerala Express which was coming from Tiruvananthapuram to New Delhi; P.W.4/Tiruppur Railway Police was also travelling along with him; at that time, a passenger informed to P.W.4 that one person was having ladies handbag and counting money and he was doing the same in a suspicious manner; on such information, P.W.3 and P.W.4 went and enquired the said person, who was having ladies handbag and money in his hand; the said person initially gave an evasive answer, but later accepted his guilt; P.W.3 and http://www.judis.nic.in P.W.4 along with accused, got down from the train at Tiruppur Station; after knowing the complaint of missing a handbag, they brought the said person to the Coimbatore Railway Station, where, P.W.1 identified the said person as accused, who ran away stealing her handbag. P.W.1 conducted enquiry with the accused, who initially gave contradictory statements and later, admitted his guilt of theft of handbag and gave his confession statement; based on Ex.P2 admissible portion of confession statement of the accused, P.W.6 arrested the accused and recovered MO1 to MO4 material objects under Ex.P3 seizure mahazar in the presence of the witnesses P.W.5/Selvaraj and one Muhammed Ali and thereafter, remanded the accused to judicial custody. After completion of the investigation, PW6 filed charge sheet against the accused for the offence under Section 379 IPC, which culminated in CC No.642 of 2012 on the file of the learned Judicial Magistrate No.VI, Coimbatore.

5.The trial Court, upon appraisal of the evidence available on record, found the petitioner / accused guilty of the offence under Section 379 IPC and convicted for the same and sentenced him to undergo rigorous imprisonment for three years. Aggrieved over the same, the petitioner preferred an appeal in Crl.A.No.40 of 2015 before the learned I Additional District and Sessions Judge, Coimbatore, which ended in dismissal. Challenging the same, the petitioner is before this Court with this Criminal Revision.

6.Assailing the impugned judgments, the learned Counsel appearing for the petitioner has forcefully submitted that both the Courts below, i.e., the trial court as well as the appellate court committed a grave error of law in convicting and sentencing the petitioner under Section 379 IPC, in the absence of any concrete evidence. According to the learned counsel, the evidence adduced on the side of the prosecution is not cogent and convincing, and that any amount of confessional http://www.judis.nic.in statement as to the recovery of the stolen properties, cannot be taken as the basis to order conviction. The learned counsel further submitted that the prosecution has not proved its case beyond reasonable doubt, as there are serious contradictions and discrepancies in the evidence and the materials adduced by them, with regard to the identification of the accused by PW1 and arrest of the accused by PW6. That apart, the prosecution has not produced the reservation ticket of P.W.1. Thus, the learned counsel contended that the accused is innocent of the guilt; and he has been falsely implicated in this case; and as such, he is entitled to be acquitted.