Jharkhand High Court: Anubha Rawat Chaudhary J., upheld and modified the Judgment given by Trial Court on grounds of the accused being found guilty of the offence under Section 354, 506 and 509 of Penal Code, 1860.
The facts in a nutshell are that the informant was chased by the accused while she used to go for tuitions at a computer center. He used to wait for her at the bus stand and chase her, make illicit comments, ask her to marry him by showing her money, convincing her to be in an illicit relationship with him. The informant refused and asked him to behave himself but to no avail as he still kept doing the same and threatened to kill her.
Later, the informant confided in her family regarding the set of events and the father and brother caught the accused red-handed and registered an FIR against him under Sections 354, 506 and 509 of Penal Code, 1860. He was tried in the trial court and sentenced to imprisonment plus fine. Hence, the instant revision application was filed for the intervention of the High Court and the order of conviction to be set aside.
Counsel for the petitioner Ashish Kumar submitted that no case under Section 354 can be made out as the petitioner never held the informants hand and hence the charges are false and the ingredients of the section are not satisfied and hence the offence cannot be made out in the eyes of law. He further submitted that accused has been convicted based on the examination of two witnesses which is not sufficient for a fair trial as the two witnesses were the informant and her brother who are highly interested witnesses in the present case. The counsel further prayed the court to take a lenient view on the point of conviction as the age of the accused on the date of conviction was 42 years and his present age is 52 years, hence the sentence is liable to be looked into and modified by the court. He has also argued that when the FIR was registered the act of holding hand/ touching the informant was not mentioned which was added later in the prosecution case and therefore the accused has been falsely implicated in the present case.
Counsel, Pankaj Kumar prayed for no interference as there was no inconsistency in the finding of the facts, the examination of the witnesses, or appreciation of the evidence, thereby being no illegality or perversity in the impugned judgment.
The Court after hearing both sides relied on a Judgment of the Supreme Court titled State of Punjab v. Major Singh, AIR 1967 SC 63 held that the act of physical touching in the present case does not affect the order of conviction as other basic ingredients of Sections 354, 506 and 509 of IPC is clearly made out. It also held that the argument that the act of touch was not made out during filing of FIR but later in the prosecution case stands no ground as FIR is not an encyclopedia of the entire prosecution case.
In view of the above, the sentence is modified and criminal revision application disposed off. [Shyam Gupta v. State of Jharkhand, 2020 SCC OnLine Jhar 718, decided on 07-08-2020]
