- (1.) In these six appeals challenge is to the judgment of the Patna High Court which directed acquittal of 8 persons upsetting conviction recorded and sentence imposed by the First Additional Sessions Judge, Darbhanga. Three of them namely, Prabhu Nath Jha, Laxmi Yadav and Badri Yadav were found guilty of offence punishable under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (in short the 'IPC') while five others namely, Ramashish Yadav, Yadu Nath Yadav, Ram Chandra Yadav, Bhutkun Yadav and Ram Prakash Yadav were found guilty of offence punishable under Section 302 read with Section 149 IPC. Three of the accused persons namely Prabhu Nath Jha, Ramashish Yadav and Yadu Nath Yadav were also found guilty of the offence punishable under Sections 25A and 27 of the Arms Act, 1959 (in short the 'Arms Act') and two of them namely Laxmi Yadav and Badri Yadav were found guilty of offence under Section 3 of the Explosive Substance Act, 1908 (in short 'Explosive Act'). Life sentence was imposed by offences relatable to Section 302 or Section 302 read with Section 149. Custodial sentence of various magnitudes were imposed for other offences. Since Prabhu Nath was absconding, his trial was separated initially but finally the trial Judge tried the Sessions trial of all the accused persons together.
(2.) Accusations which led to the trial of the accused persons and the prosecution version as unfolded during trial are as follows : On 16-6-1991 which was a Sunday at about 7.00 a. m. in the morning the informant Ramanand Yadav (PW-12) (who leads the life of a Sadhu) came along with his elder brother Thakkan Yadav, a school teacher (hereinafter referred to as the deceased) to Chanaur Chowk of the village to take tea at a tea-shop; this Chanaur Chowk is a market place in village Aabadi, where there are several small tea-shops, hair-cutting saloons, grocery shops, cloth shops etc; while Thakkan Yadav was chatting with one Lambodar Jha, a press-reporter in front of the shop of one Krishna Purbey, the accused Prabhu Nath Jha holding a revolver in small bag tied around his waist and the accused Laxmi Yadav and his brother Badri Yadav having bags on their shoulder arrived near the deceased; accused Prabhu Nath Jha fired his revolver/pistol on the right side Panjra (lower side chest) of the deceased and being hurt from this fire-arm shot of Prabhu Nath Jha, deceased fell down on the ground, and the other two accused Laxmi Yadav and Badri Yadav took out bombs from their bags and they started hurling bombs on the body of fallen deceased and these two accused persons hurled several bombs and the smoke of the bombs engulfed the surroundings; deceased was severely injured; that the other accused Ramashish and Yadu Nath who were standing near the house of Prabhu Nath Jha at a distance of about hundred feet from the chowk started firing in the air to scare the villagers to run away, and the accused Bhutkun, Ram Chandra and Ram Prakash started throwing brick-bats to make the villagers run away as the firing had
(3.) According to the prosecution case all the eight accused belong to one camp led by the accused Prabhu Nadh Jha and all the eight accused were sympathizers of a particular political party. After this occurrence all the eight accused persons ran away towards the house of Prabhu Nath Jha, and the informant Ramanand Yadav (PW-12) went to the house of Prabhu Nath Jha and found that all these accused were running away towards north.;