Thakur Prasad vs The State Of Madhya Pradesh

Rewritten Version Notice: This is a rewritten version of the original judgment.

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Not extracted

Decision Date: 27 January 1953

Coram: S.R. Das, Ghulam Hasan

In this matter the appellant, Thakurprasad, together with seven other individuals, was prosecuted for an offence punishable under Section 302 in conjunction with Section 149 of the Penal Code. The charge arose from an incident that occurred on 11-November-1950 between the hours of nine and ten in the morning at Mouza Paoni, which lies in Tehsil Mungeli of District Bilaspur, State of Madhya Pradesh. The incident involved the murder of Nem Singh, who was a co-sharer of the appellant in the Malguzari of the same village. After the trial, the Second Additional Sessions Judge of Bilaspur acquitted two of the accused, identified as Nandli and Nirghani, while finding the remaining six accused, including Thakurprasad, guilty of the offence defined in Section 302/149. The trial judge imposed a death sentence on Thakurprasad, subject to confirmation by the High Court, and sentenced the other five convicted persons to life imprisonment with transportation. The appellants then filed an appeal before the High Court of Madhya Pradesh. The High Court dismissed the appeal in its entirety except for the modification of Thakurprasad’s death sentence, which it reduced to life imprisonment. Subsequently, all six convicted persons sought special leave to appeal to this Court under Article 136 of the Constitution of India. The Court granted special leave only to Thakurprasad; the applications on behalf of the other five accused were dismissed. Consequently, the present proceeding concerns solely the special leave appeal filed by Thakurprasad.

During the trial the appellant pleaded an alibi, asserting that at the time of the alleged murder he was not present at Mouza Paoni but was instead attending a gathering of Malguzars held at Mouza Kundah, a location approximately nine miles distant from the site of the incident. No defence witness was called to substantiate this alibi. The appellant’s sole reliance on the alibi rested on the testimony of a prosecution witness, identified as Mahabir (PW-12), who claimed to have seen Thakurprasad at the Kundah meeting. Additionally, the appellant highlighted the omission of his name from the First Information Report, arguing that this omission supported his alibi. Both the trial court and the High Court rejected the alibi defence. They reasoned that the absence of the appellant’s name in the First Information Report was not determinative, because the informant, Ghunaha, who lodged the report, was not an eyewitness to the crime. Both courts accepted the testimony of several eyewitnesses, each of whom affirmed that Thakurprasad was present at the scene and participated in the killing. Moreover, the courts concluded that even if Mahabir’s statement regarding the appellant’s attendance at the Kundah meeting were true, it did not preclude the possibility that Thakurprasad was also present at the scene of the offence.

In this case, the Court noted that the evidence showed that the appellant Thakurprasad had been present at and had taken part in the occurrence at Paoni. The defence of alibi raised by the appellant raised a factual issue. Both the Additional Sessions Judge and the High Court had examined the evidence and had jointly concluded that the factual finding was against the appellant. Because the finding was common to both lower courts, the Supreme Court held that, on a petition for special leave, it could not overrule that joint factual conclusion. The only further argument presented before the Court concerned the fact that the appellant had no visible injury. It was submitted that the lack of any injury on his person supported the contention that he had not participated in the melee. The Court observed that this argument had not been raised before the lower courts, nor was it mentioned in the appellant’s grounds of appeal to the High Court. The Court further explained that while the absence of injury might suggest that the appellant did not deliver blows to Nem Singh or his companions, it did not necessarily exclude his presence at the fracas or his role in directing the conduct as alleged by the eye-witnesses. The Court added that the omission of the appellant’s name from the first information report and the lack of marks of injury were merely pieces of evidence to be considered in assessing the overall case. Since the Courts below had firmly found, on the basis of the evidence before them, that the appellant was a member of the unlawful assembly and had taken part in causing injuries to Nem Singh in furtherance of their common purpose, the Supreme Court said it could not depart from that combined finding. Consequently, the Court concluded that the appeal could not succeed and it was dismissed.