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1 - 5 of 5 (0.18 seconds)Section 34 in The Indian Penal Code, 1860 [Entire Act]
Section 306 in The Indian Penal Code, 1860 [Entire Act]
The Indian Evidence Act, 1872
Ganesh Bhavan Patel & Anr vs State Of Maharashtra on 18 October, 1978
9. The High Court, however, came to the finding inter alia
that there was no convincing evidence of systematic cruelty
or physical or mental torture of the deceased by the accused
persons. The High Court has noted that although prosecution
has examined 19 witnesses but the conviction was based upon
the evidences of PW 2 and PW 6 namely the mother and elder
brother of the deceased. The High Court has held that only
allegation made in the FIR was that accused 2, mother-in-law
of the deceased had tortured her mentally by calling her
woman of evil luck and the deceased was mentally tortured by
telling that the marriage gifts were of sub-standard quality
and the same should be returned. The High Court has not
accepted the prosecution case that Usha had committed
suicide because of such mental torture. The High Court has
not also accepted the explanation given by the mother of the
deceased, PW 2, for not making the FIR on the day of
occurrence. It has been held by the learned Judges of the
High Court that if the mother had become unconscious, one of
her sons could have gone to the police station to file a
written complaint and it is not known why the father of the
victim and other grown up sons of PW 2 did not go to the
police station to make the FIR. A decision of this Court in
the case of Ganesh Bhavan Patel v. State of
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Maharashtra 1 has been referred to by the learned Judges of
the High Court for holding that the delay in recording the
statement of material witnesses caused a cloud of suspicion
and the credibility of the entire warp and woof of the
prosecution story. The High Court has also held that from
the FIR it transpired that the accused 2, Smt Gujarati Debi,
had tortured the deceased mentally by saying 'alakshml' but
such description of the deceased had been made on two
occasions only. There is no allegation against accused 1
that he had ever induced her to commit suicide. Hence,
there was no case under Section 306 of the IPC against
accused 1, Orilal Jaiswal. The High Court has also held
that although the mother of the deceased, PW 2, had stated
in her deposition that a demand was made for fresh articles
such as fridge etc., such case was not indicated in the FIR
and PW 2 had also not stated such fact to the investigating
officer about demand of further dowry. The High Court has
also held that although allegation had been made against
accused 1 that he used to come home intoxicated and used to
physically torture Usha Jaiswal but there is no independent
and reliable evidence that Orilal Jaiswal came drunk and
tortured her physically and no circumstantial evidence to
that effect can be found. The High Court has also held that
the evidence of PW 6, Om Parkash, about the ill-treatment
meted out to the deceased should not be accepted because he
had not heard anything directly from the deceased but he
only heard such allegations from her mother. Hence,
deposition of PW 6 Om Parkash was only hearsay evidence and
no reliance should be placed on that. The High Court has
also drawn an adverse inference against the prosecution case
for not examining the father of the deceased. It has been
indicated by the High Court that although a medical
certificate has been produced to indicate that the father
was a cancer patient when the trial had started but there is
no evidence to indicate whether the condition of the father
had deteriorated between the date of occurrence and the date
of trial. The High Court has noted that as a matter of
fact, the father had accompanied PW 2 and PW 6 at Muchipara
police station at the time of lodging the FIR. Hence, he
was able to move at that time. The High Court has noted
that there is no evidence as to how and in what manner the
victim had received injuries noted by the doctor holding
postmortem examination. The High Court has held that there
is no evidence as to who had caused such injuries. On the
contrary, there is evidence that such injuries could have
been caused by hitting against a hard substance. The High
Court has come to the finding that the prosecution had
failed to establish the charges against the appellants and
the cruelty as enumerated in Section 498-A IPC had not been
established and if such cruelty had not been established,
the presumption tinder Section 113A of the Indian Evidence
Act cannot be pressed into service. Accordingly, Section
306 IPC also cannot be invoked. Since there is no
independent evidence of inducement to commit suicide either
by the mother-in-law or by the husband of the deceased the
conviction of the accused persons was unwarranted. In that
view of the matter the High Court set aside the
1 (1978) 4 SCC 371 : 1979 SCC (Cri) 1 : AIR 1979 SC 135
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conviction and sentences and passed the order of acquittal
in favour of both the accused.
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