Holding

The conviction under Section 302 IPC is upheld, but the death sentence is set aside and replaced with life imprisonment.

Summary

Dudh Nath Pandey was convicted of murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code for shooting his brother-in-law, Pappoo Kishore, after a dispute over his desire to marry Pappoo's sister. The trial and appellate courts upheld the conviction and imposed the death penalty. On appeal, the Supreme Court examined the reliability of eyewitness testimony, the adequacy of the alibi defence, and the principle that concurrent findings of lower courts are not per se immune from review. While affirming the conviction, the Court held that the normal sentence for murder is life imprisonment, not death, especially where mitigating factors such as the appellant's poverty and lack of sudden provocation exist. Consequently, the death sentence was set aside and replaced with life imprisonment.

Issues considered

The correctness of the conviction under Section 302 IPC.
Whether the death sentence is appropriate or should be commuted to life imprisonment.
The sufficiency of the alibi defence to create reasonable doubt.
The admissibility of reviewing concurrent findings of lower courts.
The reliability of eyewitness testimony in establishing the appellant's presence at the crime scene.

Legislation cited

Indian Penal Code, 1860s. 302

Subjects

murderdeath penaltylife imprisonmentSection 302 IPCalibi defenceeyewitness testimonysentencingconcurrent findings

Judgment

771

DUDH NATH PANDEY A
v.
( THE STATE OF U.P.
February 11, 1981
[Y. V. CHANDRACHUD, C.J. AND A. P. SEN, J.] B
•
Indian Penal Code-Section 302-For the offence of murder the nornial s~n
tence is sentence of life imprisonment and not of death-Witnesses failed ta
rtveal the whole truth-Considerations to be taken into account while dealing
with the qurestion of sentence for the offence of murder.

Concurrent findings of two courts below-Supreme Court, if could examine C
their correctness.
Plea of alibi-Its postulates.

The prosecution alleged that when the appellant, a motor-car driver who was
living as a tenant in the out-house of the bungalow belonging to the famil; of the
deceased, developed a fancy for the sister of the deceased. His overtures created D
resentment in the family and the deceased took upon himself the task of preventing
the appellant from pursuing his sister. The appellant's effort to take custody of
the deceased's sister through legal proceedings had failed; sometime later on a
complaint to the police that the appellant had been making indecent overtW'es
towards her he was arrested. A day before the day of the occurrence the appel-
lant was alleged to have threatened to kill the deceased if he oppooed his ( appel ·
lant's) marriage with his sister. It was further alleged that while the deceased E
was returning home on his scooter after leaving his sister in the school where she
was working as a teacher, the appellant fired a shot at him with a pistol at
which the deceased fell dead instantaneously.

He was convicted under section 302 J.P .C. and sentene:ed to death. Tue
order of conviction and sentence was confirmed by the High Court.

On the question of sentence F

HELD : 1. The Sessions Court and the High Court were right in convicting
the appellant under section 302 l.P.C. [779 G]

(a) The mere circumstance that two or more courts have taken the same view
of facts does not shut out all further inquiry into the correctness of that view.

.
Concurrence is not an insurance against the charge of perversity though a strong G
case has to be made out in order to support the charge that findings of fact
recorded by more than one court are perverse. The merit of the normal rule
that concurrent findings ought not to be reviewed by this Court consists in the
assumption that it is not likely that two or more tribunals would come .to the
same conclusion unless it is a just and fair conclusion to come to. [718 E-GJ
• 2. While dealing with the question of sentence for the offence of mu;der, the ll
' normal sentence is the sentence of life imprisonment and not of death. If in a
same conclusion unless it is a just and fair conclusion to come to. [778 E-0]
772 SUPREME COURT REPORTS (1981) 2 S.C.R

A balances do not choose to reveal the whole truth the Court while dealing with
the question of sentence has to step in interstitially and take into account all
reasonable possibilities having regard to the normal and natural course of human
affairs. In the instant case it would be unsafe, on the evidence on record, to )
sentence the appellant to the extreme penalty of death. (780 HJ

The appellant, a poor motor-car driver, must have been offended enormously
B when the deceased abuse_d him that he was a man of two paise worth and that
,.
if he attempted to marry his sister he would break his hands and feet and that
his poverty was being put up as the reason why his sister would not be allowed
•
to marry him. The dispute thus assumed proportions of a fued over social
status. The poor man was fretting that the rich man's daughter would not be I
allowed to marry him for the mere reason that he did not belong to an equal class
of society. The appellant, rightly or wrongly, believed that the girl was not un- r
C willi11g· to marry him. The incident of the previous evening could not be con-
sidered as affording "sudden" provocation to the appellant for thei crime commit-
ted by him on the following morning. It cannot reduce the offence of murder into
a lesser offence, but the mental turmoil and the serue of being socially wronged
through which the appellant was passing could not be overlooked while deciding
the appropriate sentence. [780 B-D]

D Secondly the fact that, apart from the gun-shot \vound, the deceased had no
other injury on his person except an abrasion on the left side of the chest evidently
caused by the gun-shot itself coupled with the fact that the scooter was found
"standing" on the road showed that the deceased stopped on seeing the appellant
and that there was an exchange of hot words between them culminating in the
murder. But since in the present case a part of the crucial evidence had been
screened from the Court's scrutiny the possibility of an altercation between the
E appellant and the deeeased cannot reasonably be excluded. (780 F-H]

(3) The evidence of the defence witnesses has failed to establish the alibi
of the appellants. The plea of alibi postulates the physical impossibility of the
presence o( the accused at the scene of offence by reason of his presence at
another place. The plea therefore succeeds only if it is shown that the accused
v.·as so far away at the relevant time that he could not be present at the place
F where the crime was committed. But in the present case the evidence of the
defence witnesses, accepting it at its face value, is consistent with the appellant's
presence at the factory at the appointed hour and half an hour later at the
scene of offence. So short is the distance between the t\vo points.
[778 H; 779 DJ

CRIMINAL APPELLATE JURISDICTION : Criminal Appeal No. 163
G of 1979.
Appeal by Special Leave from the Judgment and Order dated
23-8-1978 of the Allahabad High Court in Criminal Appeal No. 1264/
78 and Murder Reference No. 9/78.
R. C. Kohli for the Appellant.
•
H 0. P. Rana ood K. K. Bhatta for the Respondent.
Yogeshwar Prasad and Mrs. Rani Chhabra for the Complainant.
DUDH NATH v. U.P. STATE (Chandrachud, C.J.) 773

The Judgment of the Court was delivered by A

CHANDRACHUD, C.J .-A college-going boy called Vijay Bhan
Kishorc was shot dead on the morning of November 2, 1976 near the
Hathi Park, Dayanand Ma_rg, Allahabad. The appellant was con-
• victed for that offence under ·section 302 of the Penal Code by the B
\ learned Third Additional Sessions Judge, Allahabad and was sentenced
to death. The order of conviction and sentence having been confirm-
ed by the High Court of Allahabad by its judgment dated August 23,
~-\ 1979, the appellant has filed this appeal by Special Leave.

Vijay Bhan Kishore alias Pappoo was the son of an Advocate C
called Brij Bhan Kishore who died in about 1967 leaving behind a
widow, three daughters and Pappoo. The youngest of the three
daughters was married while the two elder were working as school
teachers. Out of those two, Ranjana Kishore was a teacher in the St.
Anthony's Convent.
D

The appellant, Dudh Nath Pandey, who was a motor-car driver
by occupation, used to live as a tenant in an out-house of a sprawling
bungalow belonging to the family of the deceased, situated at 17,
Stanley Road, Allahabad. The appellant develop-'A a fancy for E
Ra'njana who was about 20 years of age when he came to live in the
out-house. The overtures made by the appellant to Ranjana created
resentment in her family and its only surviving male member, her
brother Pappoo, took upon himself the task of preventing lhe appel-
lant from pursuing his sister. As a first step, the appellant was turned
out of th~ out-house. Soon thereafter, he filed an application before F
·~·
the City Magistrate, Allahabad, asking for the custody of Ranjana,
alleging that she was his lawfully wedded wife. That application was
dismissed by the learned Magistrate after recording the statemerit of
Ranjana, in which she denied that she was married to the appellant.
The appellant thereafter filed a habeas corpus petition in the Allaha-
bad High Court alleging that Ranjana was detained unlawfully by the G
members of her family, including her uncle K. P. Saxena, and asking
that she be released from their custody. Ranjami denied in that pro-
ceedings too that she was married to the appellant or that she was
unlawfully detained by the members of her family. The habeas corpus
petition was dismissed by the High Court on November 8, 1973. On
• August 1, 1975, the Principal of St. Anthony's Convent made a com- H
plaint to the police that the appellant had made indecent overtures to
Ranjana. The appellant was arrested as a result of that complaint.

l:X.UW
774 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1981] 2 S.C.R.

A On November 1, 1976, Ranjana was having an evening stroll with
her brother, the deceased Pappoo, in the compound of their house.
The app!'llant came there in a rikshaw, abused Pappoo and is alleged
to have threatened to kill him, if he dared oppose his, the appellant's
marriage with Ranjana. As a result of these various incidents and the
family's growing concern for Ranjana's safety, Pappoo used to escort
B I'
Ranjana every morning to the school where she was teaching.
On the following day, i.e. on November 2, 1976, Pappoo took
•
Ranjana to her school on his scooter as usual. The classes used to
begin at 9-30 A.M. but Ranjana used to go to the school 30 to 40
minutes before time for correcting the students' home-work. After
c dropping Ranjana at the school, Pappoo started back for home on his
scooter. While he was passing by the Children's Park, known as-the
Hathi Park, the appellant is alleged to have fired at him with a
country-made pistol. Pappoo fen down from his scooter and died
almost instantaneously.
D
The. occurrence is said to have been wi.tnessed by Harish Chandra
(P. W. 3), a domestic servant of the family of the deceased and by
Harish Chandra's friend Ashok Kumar (P. W. 1). Harish Chandra
used fo live in the out-house of the deceased's bunglow at 17, Stanley
Road, while Ashok Kumar, who generaHy lived at Kanpur, is said to
E have come to Allahabad the previous day in search of employment.
Almost immediately after Pappoo and Ranjana left the house on the
scooter, Ashok Kumar and Harish Chandra too left the house as the
former wanted to see the Hathi Park. They were nearabout the gate
of the park, which is a few steps away from the scene of occurrence,
when the deceased Pappoo was passing along on his scooter, after
F dropping Ranjana at the St. Anthony's Convent. Ashok Kumar and
Barish Chandra are alleged to have seen the appellant, who was stand-
ing near the northern boundary of the park, firing a shot at Pappoo. v-
The appellant re-loaded his pistol and is said to have run away to-
wards the south-east.

G Ashok Kumar and Harish Chandra rushed to St. Anthony's Con-
vent in a rikshaw and informed Raujaua Kishore about the muraer of
her brother. Ranjaua went to the scene of incident along with them
and on finding that her brother was dead, she went straight to the
Cannington police station which is about 2 kms. away. She wrote out
the report (Ex. Ka-1) in her own hand and submitted it to the officer-
u in-charge of the police station at 9-45 A.M. In the meantime, informa- •
tion of the murder had reached the police station of Colonelganj,
within the 'jurisdiction' of which the murder had taken place.
DUDH NATH v. U.P. STATE (Chandrachud, CJ.) 775

The police deserve a word of appreciation because they did not, A
as usual, enter into a squabble as to in whose 'jurisdiction' the offence
had taken place. H. R. L. Srivastava, the sub inspector attached to
Colonelganj police station, went within minutes to the scene of offence
and, believing that Pappoo was alive, sent him in a jeep to the Tej
Bahadur Sapru hospital. A little later, P. S. I. Chandrapal Singh of the
Cannington police station arrived on the scene and started the inveiti- B
gation. He took charge of an empty cartridge-shell and the blood-
stained earth and later, he sent the dead body of Pappoo for post-
mortem examination.

P. S. I. Srivastava arrested the appellant at about 2-30 P .M. while c
he was standing near a pan-shop in front of the Indian Telephone
Industries, Naini, where he used to work. The appellant was taken to
the scene of offence where he made a certain statement and took out
a loaded pistol from a heap of rubbish lying on the Kamla Nehru Road,
being the direction in which he had run away after killing Pappoo.
The Ballistic expert, Budul Rai, opined that the empty cartridge-shell, D
which was lying at the scene of offence, was fired from that particular
pistol.

Dr. G. S. Saxena, who conducted the post-mortem examination
found a single gun-shot injury on the left side of the chest of the E
deceased, below the armpit. The injury had caused seven pellet
wounds, each measuring 1/3 inch in diameter. Seven pellets were
recovered from the body. The injury, according to Dr. Saxena, was
sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death.

The appellant stated in his defence that he used to live in the house F
of the deceased as the guest of the family and not as a tenant and that
Ranjana got intimate with him during that period. He left the house
because she told him that there was danger to his life. The murder
of Pappoo, according to the appellant, was engineered by Dr. K. P.
Saxena, the maternal uncle of the deceased. The appellant denied
G
his hand in the murder, saying that he had no reason to do so since
the deceased's mother and the other members of the family desired
that he should marry Ranjana.

The appellant examined five witnesses to prove his alibi, his con-
• tention being that he was on duty at the Indian Telephone Industries, H
right from 8-30 A.M. on the date of the incident and that he was
arrested from inside the factory at about 2-30 P.M. while on duty.
776 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1981] 2 S.C.R.

A The learned Additional Sessions Judge, Allahabad, examined the
Deputy Superintendent of Police, R. P. Bhanu, and the General Mana-
ger of the Indian Telephone Industries as Court witnesses.
The prosecution examined 13 witnesses in support of its case that
the appellant had committed the murder of Pappoo. Ashok Kumar
B (P.W. 1) and Harish Chandra (P.W. 3) were examined as eye-
witnesses to the incident. R:i.njana Kishore (P.W. 2) was examined ,.
to prove the motive for the murder as also for showing that the
deceased Pappoo had taken her to the school on his scooter. and that,
soon thereafter, she was informed by the two eye-witnesses of the
murder. Ram Kishore (P.W. 4) was examined to prove the arrest
c of the appellant and the recovery of the loaded pistol. P. S. I.
Srivastava (P.W. 9) and P.S.I. Chandrapal Singh (P.W. 10) deposed
about the various steps taken during the course of investigation. Dr.
G. S. Saxena (P.W. 11) was examined in order to show the riature
of the injuries suffered by the deceased while Budul Rai (P.W. 12)
stated that the empty cartridge-shell which was lying at the scene of
D offence was fired from the particular pistol which is stated to have been
recovered at the instance of the appellant. The other prosecution wit-
nesses are mostly of a formal nature.
Were this a case of circumstantial evidence, different considerations
would have prevailed because the balance of evidence after excluding
the testimony of the two eye witnesses is not of the standard required
in cases dependent wholly on circumstantial evidence. Evidence of
recovery of the pistol at the instance of the appellant cannot by itself
prove that he who pointed out the weapon weilded it in offence. The
statement accompanying the discovery is woefully vague to identify
the authorship of concealment, with the result that the pointing out of
F the weapon may at best prove the appellant's knowledge as to where
ihc weapon was kept. The evidence of the Ballistic expert carries the
proof of ·the charge a significant step ahead, but not near enough,
because at the highest, it shows that the shot which killed Pappoo was
fired from the pistol which was pointed out by the appellant. The
evidence surrounding the discovery of the pistol may not be discarded
G as wholly untrue but it leaves a few significant questions unanswered
and creates a sense of uneasiness in the mind of a Criminal CO'Urt,
the Court of conscience that it has to be : How could the appellant
have an opportunity to conceal the pistol in broad-day light on a
public thoroughfare? If he re-loaded the pistol as a measure of self
protection, as suggested by the prosecution, why did he get rid of it
H so quickly by throwing it near the Hathi Park itself ? And how come •
that the police hit upon DOile better thnn Ram Kishore (P.W. 4) to
witness the .discovery of tl1e pistol ? Ram . Kishore had a!mldy
DUDH NATH v. U.P. STATE (Chandrachud, C.J.) 777

deposed in seven different cases in favour of the prosecution and was , 'A
evidently at the beck and call of the police.

But the real hurdle in the way of the appellant is the evidence of
the eye witnesses : Ashok Kumar (P .W. 1) and Harish Chandra
(P.W. 3). Shri R. C. Kohli who appears for the appellant made a
. valiant attempt to demolish their evidence but in spite of the counsel's B
• able argument, we find it difficult to hold that the eye-witnesses have
perjured themselves by claiming to be present at the time and place
of the occurrence. It is true that Harish Chandra, who was working
as a domestic servant with the deceased's family, should normally have
been doing his daily morning chores. Few masters would permit a
household servant to go away on a sight-seeing spree right in the c
morning. But there are at le'!,st two plausible reasons which lend
assurance to the claim that Harish Ch<mdra left the house almost
immediately after the deceased Pappoo drove away with his sister
Ranjana. Ashok Kumar had come to Allahabad the previcms evening
and he wanted to go to the Hathi Park where, though it is called a
D
children's park, adults too find their merriment. There is nothing
fundalnentally improbable in Ashok Kumar coming to Allahabad in
.... search of employment and equally, nothing inherently strange in the
two friends going out on a frolic. And though a small consideration,
it is relevant that the normal morning routine of Harish Chandra was
to help in the kitchen but the 2nd November, 1976 was an Ekadashi I~
day and therefore, there was not much to do for him.

The second reason is more weighty and almost clinches the issue.
· The evidence of Ranjana (P.W. 2) shows beyond the manner of
doubt that Harish Chandra and Ashok Kumar broke to her the news
of her brother's murder, while she was in the school. The events after F
the murper happened in such quick succession that there was no time
for any one to contrive and confabulate. Within ten minutes of the
occurrence, Ranjana was informed of the incident by the two eye-
witnesses and within a few moments thereafter she went to the scene
of the tragedy. Her F.l.R. (Ex. Ka-1) was recorded at the police
station at 9-45 a.m. A fact of preponderating importance is that the G
story which Ranjana disclosed in the F.I.R. is precisely the same as the
witnesses, including herself, narrated in the Court. The F.I.R. is a
brief document of a page and half. But it is remarkable that it men-
tions ( 1) that the appellant wanted to marry Ranjana and was haras-
sing her towards that end; (2) that there was a quarrel between the
• appellant and Pappoo the previous evening, in which the former gave H
a threat of life to the latter (3) that Ranjana left for the school on the
day of occurrence at 8-45 A.M.; and ( 4) that soon thereafter Harish
778 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1981] 2 S.C.R.

A Chandra and Ashok Kumar met her at the school and conveyed to her
that they had gone to see the Hathi Park when, while Pappoo was
passing along the road, the Appellant fired a shot at him. We con-
sider it beyond the normal range of human propensities that Ranjana
could have built up the whole story within three quarters of an hour
which intervened between the time that she learnt of her brother's
B murder and the lodging by her of the F.I.R. She could not have taken •
the risk of creating a false witness by placing Aslfok Kumar, who
normally, resided in Kanpur, alongside Harish Chandra. With the
death of her brother, her own house was left without a male member.
At home was an ailing mother and tw;, other sisters, more or less of
her own a_ge. There was no one to advise her upon the hatching of
c a conspiracy to involve the appellant and she could not have been in
a proper frame of mind to do anything of the kind on her own. Her
inexperience of life, the promptness with which she gave the F.l.R. and
the weqlth of details she mentioned therein afford an assurance that
the story of the eye-witnesses is true in so far as it goes. Shri Kohli's
D submission that Ranjana's F.I.R. is anti-timed and must have been
recorded late in the evening leaves us cold.

Shri Kohli has pointed a defect here and an improbability there
in the evidence of the eye-witnesses but it has to be borne in mind
that the Trial Court and the High Court have concurrently believed
E that eVidence. We do not suggest that the mere circumstances that
two or more courts have taken the same view of facts shuts out all
further inquiry into the correctness of that view. For example, con-
currence is not an insurance against the charge of perversity though
a strong case has to be made out in order to support the charge that
findings of fact recorded by more than one court are perverse, that is
F to say, they are such that no reasonable tribunal could have recorded
them. The merit of the normal rule that concurrent findings ought
not to be reviewed by this Court consists in the assumption that it is
not likely that two or lllPfe tribunals would come to the same conclu-
sion unless it is a just and fair conclusion to come to. In the instant
case, the view of the evidence taken by the Sessions Court and the
G H;i.gh Court is, at least, a reasonable view to take and that is why we
are not disposed, so to say, to re-open the whole case on evidence.
We have indicated briefly why we consider that the eye-witness
account accords with the broad probabilities of the case.
Counsel for the appellant pressed hard upon us that the defence
H evidence establishes the alibi of the appellant. We think not. The
evidence led by the appellant to show that, at the relevant time, he
was on duty at his usual place of work at Naini has a certain amount
DUDH NATH v. U.P. STATE (Chandrachud, C.J.) 779

of plausibility but that is about all. The High Court and the Sessions A
Court have pointed out many a reason why that evidence cannot be
accepted as true. The appellant's colleagues at the Indian Telephone
Industries made a brave bid to save his life by giving evidence sug-
gesting that he was at his desk at or about the time when the murder
took place and further, that he was arrested from within the factory.
B
We do not want to attribute motives to them merelv because they were
examined by the defence. Defence witnesses are entitled to equal
treatment with those of the prosecution. And, Courts ought to over-
come their traditional, instinctive disbelief in defence witnesses. Quite
often, they tell lies but so do the prosecution witnesses. Granting
that D. Ws. 1 to 5 are right, their evidence, particularly in the light of c
the evidence of the two Court witnesses, is insufficient to prove that the
appellant could nqt have been present near the Hathi Park at about
~-00 A.M. when the murder of Pappoo was committed. The plea of
alibi postulates the physical impossibility of the presence of the
accused at the scene of offence by reason of his presence at another
place. The plea can therefore succeed only if it is shown that the D
accused was so far away at the relevant time that he could not be
present at the place where the crime was committed. The evidence
of the defence witnesses, accepting it at its face value, is consistent
with the appellant's presence at the Naini factory at 8-30 A.M. and at
the scene of offence at 9.00 A.M. So short is the distance between
the two points. The workers punch their cards when they enter the E
factory but when they leave the factory; they do not have to pnnch
the time of their exit. The appellant, in all prnbability, went to the
factory at the appointed hour, left it immediately and went in search
of his prey. He knew when, precisely, Pappoo would return after
dropping Ranjana at the school. The appellant appears to have
attempted to go back to his work but that involved the risk of the time F
of his re-entry being pnnched again. That is how he was arrested at
about 2-30 P.M. while he was loitering near the pan-shop in front of
the factory. There is no truth in the claim that he was arrested from
inside the factory.
That settles the issue of guilt. We agree with the view of the High G
Court and the Sessions Court and uphold the appellant's conviction
under section 302 of the Penal Code.
The question of sentence has gravely agitated our minds. A young
college-going boy was murdered because he was trying to wean away
his sister from th_e influence of the appellant who had set his heart R
upon her. But there are two reasons why we are not disposed to con-
firm the death sentence. In the first place, the appellant was smarting
780 SUPREME COURT REPORTS [1981] 2 S.C.R.

A under the insult hurled at him by the deceased Pappoo, the pre-
vious evening. As stated by Ranjana in the F.I.R., when the appel-
lant proclaimed his determination to marry her, Pappoo retorted :
"You ar·~ a ma'n of two Paisa's worth. How can you dare to marry
my sister ? I will break your hands and feet." A poor motor-car
driver that ihe appellant was, he must have been offended enormously
B
that his poverty was being put up as the reawn why Ranjana would
not be allowed to marry him. The dispute thus assumed the propor-
tions of a feud over social status, the poor man fretting that the rich
man's daughter would not be allowed to marry him for the mere
reason that he did not belong to an equal class of society. And it is
c evident that he believed, rightly or wrongly, that Ranjana was not un-
willing to take him as a husband. It is in the immediate background
of the previous evening's incident that the question of sentence has
perforce to be considered. That incident cannot certainly be con-
sidered as affording "sudden" provocation to the appellant for the
crime committed by him the next morning and, therefore, it cannot
0 reduce the offence of murder into a lesser offence. But, the mental
turmoil and the sense of being socially wronged through which the
appellant was passing cannot be overlooked while deciding which is
the appropriate sentence to pass, the rule being that for the offence
of murder, the normal sentence is the sentence of life imprisonment
and not of death.
E
Secondly, Harish Chandra and Ashok Kumar do not appear to
have revealed the whole truth to the Court. If the appellant had fired
a shot at Pappoo while the latter was driving along on his scooter, and
if Pappoo, as is alleged, dropped dead, his scooter would have dragged
him ahead and in that process he would have received some injury.
F The scooter too would have been damaged, howsoever slightly. But it
is strange that apart from the gun-shot wound, Pappoo had no other
in jury on his person except an abrasion on the left side Of the chest
which was evidently caused by the gun-shot itself. The scooter was
not dragged at all, except for the mark of pellets. And, most impor-
tantly, the scooter was not lying on the road but was "standing".
G Pappoo s_eems to have' stopped on seeing the appellant and quite
clearly, there was an exchange of hot words between them which cul-
minated in Pappoo's murder. The death of the brave, young lad
which has deprived the familv of the succour of its only male member •
is to be deeply lamented. But, if witnesses on whose evidence the life
of an accused hangs in the balance, do not choose to reveal the whole
u truth, the Court. while dealing with the question of sentence, has to
step in interstitially and take into account all reasonable possibilities,
having regard to the normal and natural course of human affairs.
DUDH NATH v. U.P. STATE (Chandrachud, C.J.) 781

Since a part of the crucial event has been screened from the Court's A
scrutiny and the possibility of [ln altercation between the appellant and
!he dej:eased cannot reasonably be excluded, we consider it unsafe
to sentence the appellant to the extreme penalty.
frt the result, we confirm the conviction of the appellant under
• section 302 of the Penal Code but set aside the sentence of death n
imposed upon him. We sentence the appellant to imprisonment for
life. The appeal is, accordingly, allowed partly.

P.B.R. Appeal allowed pnrt/.v.

'

l 1