New Delhi: Mere presence of an accused at the crime scene is sufficient to convict a person provided he had an "active mind in furtherance of the common object," the Supreme Court has ruled in a case where the groom was
murdered on the very next day of his marriage.
A bench of Justices V S Sirpurkar and A R Dave passed the ruling while dismissing an appeal of four life convicts challenging their conviction on the ground that they were merely present at the site and their active involvement was not established.
"The law of vicarious liability under Section 149 of the IPC is crystal clear that even the presence in the unlawful assembly, but with an active mind, to achieve the common object makes such a person vicariously liable for the acts of
the unlawful assembly," Justice Sirpurkar observed.
In this case, the groom Shankar Rai was killed after the convicts - Amerika Rai, Mithilesh Rai, Sanjay Rai and Sipahi Rai along with another Chulhan Raj shot him dead.
The irony was that the convicts and the deceased were all friends and relatives who had visited the bride's village the previous day to attend the marriage at Ishupur village in Vaishali district in Bihar on June 26, 1995.
At the bride's village there was an altercation between members of the two parties. On the next day, when Ram Babu, the brother-in-law of Shankar was assaulted by the convicts, Shankar intervened in the matter and after some time
the convicts went inside their house and brought firearms.
In the melee that followed, Shankar was shot dead and another person seriously injured as he was presumed to be taking the side of his brother-in-law.The sessions court awarded life imprisonment to six of them, including Darbesh Rai.
The Patna High Court dismissed their plea following which two of the convicts Amerika Rai and Mithlesh took the plea that they were merely present at the scene.
Rejecting the argument, the apex court said the evidence on record clearly established the involvement of the five convicts in the case.
"In that light, when the evidence is examined, it is obvious that Amerika Rai (A-1) who was the elder in the family, Mithilesh Rai (A-4) and Chulhan Rai (A-3), instead of acting in a responsible manner and preventing any unpleasant
incident, exhorted the accused persons to bring the gun.
"The guns are normally not brought for making a show.The exhortation to bring the gun definitely speaks about the guilty mind of Amerika Rai (A-1), so also the use of guns by Mithilesh Rai (A-4), Sanjay Rai (A-5) and Sipahi Rai (A-6) is
very clear that they also had guilty mind," the bench said.
The apex court said it was a cruel murder of a young bridegroom Shankar Rai who was married only a day before. He was put to death virtually without any reason. All the accused persons appear to be either relations or neighbours of deceased Shankar Rai. The deceased had suffered as many as eight injuries, all attributable to the gun shot injuries.
"The presence of Ram Babu (PW-6) acted as a flash point. What happened is that deceased Shankar Rai seeing that his wife's relation was being slapped and fisted by the accused persons, had resisted the attempt on the part of the
accused persons and that ultimately proved to be the raison d'etre of his death.
"Therefore, there is no doubt in our mind that this was undoubtedly done with a common object of teaching lesson to deceased Shankar Rai who had taken as was expected side of Ram Babu (PW-6), the brother-in-law of his bride," the bench said.
The apex court however, acquitted Darbesh Rai another convict giving him the the benefit of doubt.
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