Ugar Ahir And Ors. vs The State Of Bihar

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

Court: Supreme Court of India

Case Number: Not extracted

Decision Date: 6 March 1964

Coram: K. Subba Rao, K.C. Das Gupta, Raghubar Dayal

In the case titled Ugar Ahir and others versus the State of Bihar, decided on 6 March 1964, the Supreme Court of India heard an appeal before a bench consisting of Justices K. Subba Rao, K. C. Das Gupta and Raghubar Dayal, with Justice K. Subba Rao authoring the judgment. The appeal was entertained by special leave and was directed against the judgment and order of the High Court of Judicature at Patna, which had affirmed the conviction of the appellants and the sentence that had been imposed by the Additional Sessions Judge at Chapra pursuant to Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code. The prosecution case was summarized as follows: on 18 April 1960 at about one‑p.m., a man named Sheonandan set out on a bicycle from his home to the settlement known as tola Korra in order to seek labourers. While returning from tola Korra along the village path that led from there to Sahbajpur and subsequently to Nathpur, three of the accused—identified as Sudama, Chhathu and Nathuni—who would later be acquitted by the Additional Sessions Judge, emerged from the eastern side of a well situated to the south of that path and began to chase him while brandishing lathis and creating a disturbance. The remaining accused, namely Ugar, Chandrika, Mahadeo and Chandan, who are the appellants in this matter, were seated under a Bar tree located to the west of the well; they rose with bhalas and pharsas and encircled Sheonandan. Additional accused who were armed with lathis also joined the group at that point. In response, Sheonandan discarded his bicycle and fled toward Habibnagar, while he was pursued by the seven accused and simultaneously assaulted with lathis, bhalas and pharsas. He ran across several fields and eventually entered the field belonging to a man named Mahadeo Ahir, which lay to the north of the road. There, he turned back, seized the bhala from the hands of appellant Chandrika, and struck both Chandrika and Ugar with the weapon. Chandrika then retrieved his bhala, and subsequently all the appellants together with the formerly mentioned acquitted accused again struck Sheonandan with the weapons they carried. Sheonandan collapsed in Mahadeo Ahir’s field and died as a result of the injuries. Three private witnesses, identified as P. W. 1, P. W. 2 and P. W. 4, observed the chase and the assaults from a distance and pleaded with the accused to refrain from assaulting Sheonandan; instead, the accused assaulted these witnesses with lathis. The alarm raised by the witnesses drew other persons to the scene, including the wife and the sister‑in‑law of the deceased. Medical testimony revealed that the dead body of Sheonandan bore twenty‑five injuries, both punctured and incised, and that the three witnesses also sustained injuries. In addition, two of the appellants, namely Ugar and Chandrika, suffered punctured wounds on their own bodies. Consequently, the appellants and the accused who had been acquitted were committed to trial before the Sessions Court for the murder of Sheonandan. It will be seen from the prosecution case that the incident, from the time of the pursuit by the three acquitted accused to the time when the witnesses were assaulted, formed a continuous sequence of events.

In this matter the Court observed that the entire sequence beginning with the assault on the witnesses formed a single continuous transaction, but for the sake of analysis it could be divided into four distinct stages. The first stage involved the pursuit of the deceased, who was riding a bicycle, by the three individuals who were later acquitted. The second stage described the moment when the appellants joined the three pursuers at a location identified as the Bar tree. The third stage covered the joint chase of the deceased by all the accused, during which they continued to assault him until he collapsed in the field belonging to Mahadeo Ahir. The fourth and final stage pertained to the intervention of the witnesses, identified as P. Ws. 1, 2 and 4, and the subsequent assault on those witnesses by two of the appellants together with the previously acquitted accused.

The learned Additional Sessions Judge, after a thorough consideration of the whole evidentiary record, arrived at several specific findings. He noted that the village was divided into two factions, one comprising the accused and the other consisting of the deceased and the witnesses, with members of each group being wrestlers and a prior history of criminal proceedings existing between the factions. He concluded that the prosecution’s claim that the three acquitted individuals had chased the deceased with lathis was untenable. He further held that the testimony of the prosecution witnesses, who alleged that the accused had responded to their request to cease the assault by striking them with bhalas and lathis, was not credible. He observed that no bicycle was recovered and there were no traces of a bicycle on the ground where the incident occurred. He found that the witnesses’ assertion that lathis had been used on the deceased was false because the dead body showed no lathi injuries. He also rejected the version that Sheonandan had seized a bhala from one of the accused and used it to attack Ugar and Chandrika as untrue.

Having dismissed major portions of the prosecution case, the Additional Sessions Judge formulated a new theory, which he expressed in the following terms: “From the entire evidence it is clear that there was a clash between Shivnandan and Sheodutta, Jagarnath and Dharamnath on one side and the four accused Ugar, Chandrika, Mahadeo and Chandan on the other. As I have said, from the entire evidence it was clear that Sheonandan was killed as a result of assaults by the four accused but the three witnesses Sheodutt, Jagarnath and Dharmanath were not innocent persons who followed the accused to the field of Mahadeo asking them not to assault Sheonandan but they must have also been participants in the clash. Some how the clash took place but we are only left to guess as to how it started.” Based on this revised construction, the judge acquitted the three previously acquitted accused and convicted the appellants under Section 304 (Part I) of the Indian Penal Code, imposing a term of rigorous imprisonment for seven years. On appeal, the High Court followed the same pattern in the appreciation of the evidence. It accepted the motive; it disbelieved the story of pursuit of the

The High Court held that it did not accept the testimony of the three acquitted accused regarding the deceased. It also rejected the witnesses’ claim that Sheonandan had seized a bhala from one of the accused and had injured two of them with it. The Court accepted the finding of the learned Additional Sessions Judge that the accused could not have caused injuries to the witnesses after Sheonandan had fallen in the field of Mahadeo Ahir. In addition, the Court agreed with the Additional Sessions Judge’s inference that it was possible for the witnesses, who themselves had sustained injuries, to have taken part in the incident in support of Sheonandan when he was assaulted by the appellants and other persons. The Court further concluded that all the witnesses had concealed the injuries they had inflicted on some members of the opposite party. Having concurred with the Additional Sessions Judge that the witnesses were active participants and having disbelieved the witnesses on material points, the Court found that the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the appellants had chased and assaulted Sheonandan with pharsas and bhalas until his death in the field of Mahadeo Ahir. On that basis, the Court affirmed the judgment of the trial court. Counsel for the appellants, Mr. Nuruddin Ahmed, argued that both the Additional Sessions Judge and the High Court, after jointly finding the prosecution witnesses to be partisan and participants, had erred by reconstructing a prosecution case that differed from the one originally presented to the court and from the version given by the witnesses. The Court noted that the maxim “falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus” is neither a rule of law nor a rule of practice, observing that it is rare to encounter a witness whose testimony contains no falsehood, exaggeration, or embellishment. Accordingly, the Court explained that it is the duty of the judiciary to examine evidence carefully and, using an apt metaphor, separate the grain from the chaff. However, the Court cautioned that it cannot simply reject the core of the prosecution’s case or the material portions of the evidence and fabricate its own narrative from the remainder. The Court observed that in the present matter, the lower courts had effectively done so, disbelieving almost the entire version offered by the witnesses concerning the pursuit, the assault on the deceased with lathis, the accused riding a bicycle, the deceased’s seizure of the bhala and his subsequent attack on two appellants, the allegation that the accused attacked the witnesses, and the witnesses’ claim of being neutral observers. The Court reasoned that if all of this was disbelieved, nothing remained of the factual matrix. By inverting the metaphor, the courts had discarded the truthful elements (the grain) and accepted the falsehoods (the chaff), thereby convicting the appellants. We, therefore, set

In this case, the Court discontinued the conviction that had been recorded against the accused individuals and also annulled the punishment that had been imposed upon them. By setting aside both the judgment of guilt and the accompanying sentence, the Court effectively overturned the earlier decision. Consequently, the Court granted relief to the petitioners by allowing the appeal that they had filed. The Court further ordered that the accused persons be released from detention. Accordingly, the Court directed that the appellants be set free without any further penalty. The direction required that the authorities ensure the immediate release of the appellants. The reversal of the conviction meant that the legal finding of guilt was nullified, and the nullification of the sentence meant that any period of incarceration or other punitive measures prescribed by the lower court were no longer enforceable. The Court’s allowance of the appeal signified that the petitioners’ contentions were accepted, and the directive to set the appellants free indicated that the Court intended that they be restored to their prior status, free from the consequences of the earlier judgment. All procedural steps related to the execution of the sentence were thereby discontinued. The order also implied that any records of the conviction would be expunged in accordance with applicable law, thereby clearing the appellants’ criminal histories. Thus, the final decree of the Court restored the appellants to a position of innocence under the law.