Constitution of India: Art.136 – Special leave petition – Re-appreciation of evidence by Supreme Court – Permissibility – Held: Supreme Court, while entertaining an appeal by way of special leave under Art.136, ordinarily, will not attempt to re-appreciate the evidence on record unless the decision of the Trial Court or the High Court is shown to have committed a manifest error of law or procedure or the conclusion reached by the courts below is, on the face of it, perverse – Merely because another view on the same evidence is possible, that cannot be the basis to interfere with the finding of fact recorded by the Courts below much less concurrent finding of facts.

Penal Code, 1860: s.302/34 – Six accused – Knife blows on the stomach of the victim-deceased by the appellants causing fatal injuries – Evidence of eye-witnesses (PW-1 and PW-2) – Conviction of appellants-accused no.1 and 2 and acquittal of others – Prosecution case was that on the fateful day, all the accused persons obstructed the deceased who was riding a motorcycle – Immediately, after he was stopped, both the appellants inflicted knife blows on the stomach of the deceased one after the other – Evidence of PW-1 and PW-2 was accepted by the Trial Court as well as the High Court as truthful – No reason to deviate from that concurrent view taken by the Courts below – Deficiencies pointed out by the appellants in the investigation were insignificant and trivial and whole evidence of PW-1 and PW-2 was corroborated by the other evidence in the form of medical reports and recovery of human blood stained soil from the spot where the deceased was assaulted – Further, there was no delay in lodging FIR –Recovery of weapon used by accused No.1 during the commission of the offence also reinforced the role and involvement of the appellants in the commission of the crime – The quality substantive evidence on record clearly established the guilt of the appellants – The fact that there was no evidence about the previous enmity and that no evidence was produced by the prosecution in that regard, cannot be the basis to reverse the concurrent view taken by two courts below, recording finding of guilt against the appellants – Order of conviction of appellants is not interfered with.

Criminal Law: Benefit of doubt – Wrong benefit given to acquitted accused cannot enure to the advantage of the convicted accused against whom clear, truthful and unassailable evidence was available.

Witnesses: Reaction of witnesses – Held: There cannot be uniformity in the reaction of witnesses – There is possibility of variation and difference in the behaviour of witnesses or their reactions from situation to situation and individual to individual – The Court must not decipher the evidence on unrealistic basis – The difference in the statements of the prosecution witnesses, in the instant case, about the conditions of the deceased when he was admitted in the hospital, therefore, would not take the matter any further especially when the medical reports clearly indicated that he was admitted in the hospital in semi-conscious state and was declared dead by the doctor only thereafter.