ASOKE KUMAR CHAKRABORTY Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) These two appeals have been preferred against the order of conviction and sentence passed by the learned Judge, City Sessions Court, Calcutta, in Sessions Trial No. 1 of November 1972, convicting and sentencing the two Appellants Asoke Kumar Chakra-borty and Kanchan Choudhury to, suffer imprisonment for life for an offence under Sections 302/ 34 of the Indian Penal Code.

(2.) Some misguided young men who imagined themselves to be saviours of this country started a movement popularly known as naxalite movement. Several murders were committed and the condition of thing in 1970 in West Bengal was intolerable. On June 3, 1970, one murderous outrage was added to the black record of the extremists. The deceased Amitava Sinha Roy alias Dipu was an S.I. of Police attached to the Special Branch of Police in Calcutta. Formerly, he was a resident of the locality known as Akhil Mistry Lane in Calcutta. Subsequently, he shifted his residence to Uttarpara. It has transpired in evidence that the deceased along with some other officers and constables' of the Special Branch of Police carrying arms and ammunitions and in plain dress went to Sraddhananda Park near Akhil Mistry Lane in the afternoon of June 3, 1970. Two officers of the rank of the Assistant Sub-Inspector with two constables took up their position in the Sraddhananda Park to keep watch. The deceased took a pan from the pan shop of P.W. 14 Hari at the junction of Amherst Street and Akhil Mistry Lane adjacent to the Park and soon thereafter he along with some other Police officers went to Akhil Mistry Lane and Rajani Gupta Row. Amitava visited the small goldsmith shop belonging to P.W. 23 Panchanan at about 6-15 p.m. and had a talk with him. Thereafter, he returned to the junction of Akhil Mistry Lane and Amherst Street at about 6-40 p.m. While other Police officers and the deceased were talking, Pankaj (absconding), a friend of the deceased, called him and they proceeded along Akhil Mistry Lane. That Amitabha was brutally assaulted in front of the premises No. 50 Akhil Mistry Lane admits of no doubt. P.W. 26, Dr. Mukherjee, held the post-mortem examination on the deadbody of Amitava on June 4, 1970 and found the following injuries in his person:

(3.) The next point that arises for consideration is whether the death of Amitava was caused in furtherance of the common intention of the two Appellants and others. Prosecution relied on the evidence of P.W. 6, P.W. 8 and P.W. 12 and on the retracted judicial confession to bring home the charge against Asoke. As regard the other Appellant Kanchan, prosecution had led evidence through P.Ws. 6, 7 and 12 and pressed into service the retracted judicial confession. It also relied on the alleged recovery on June 12, 1970, a hawai shirt with stains of human blood from the residence of this Appellant's aunt at Dum Dum area from where the Appellant was arrested. It may be stated that the Appellant Kanchan was not ordinarily residing there and while examined by the learned Committing Magistrate and the learned Session Judge, he gave his address as 4/1A Dr. Amal Roy Choudhury Lane, Calcutta-9.