The Supreme Court has held that merely because the accused had made an effort to save the victim after putting her on fire in all his senses will not take the case out of the clutches of clause 4 of Section 300 of the IPC.
The bench comprising Justices Dr. Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah dismissing the appeal of the appellant observed that,
“The act of the accused pouring kerosene on the deceased and thereafter setting her ablaze by matchstick is imminently dangerous which, in all probability, will cause death. Therefore, the High Court has rightly convicted the accused for the offence under Section 302 IPC.”
In the present case the appellant was accused of killing his wife by setting her on fire. Thereafter, he tried to extinguish the fire and took her to the hospital where she died.
The appellant had submitted in his defence before the trial court that the fire was accidental after which he was acquitted. Aggrieved from the order of trial court, State filed an appeal in the High Court and the High Court reversed the order of the trial court after going through all facts and re-appreciating the entire evidence on record.
The counsel for appellant submitted that as such when it was an appeal against the judgment and order of acquittal, the High Court was not justified in re-appreciating the oral as well as documentary evidence. He further submitted that only in a case where the findings recorded by the learned trial Court are found to be perverse, the interference by the appellate court against the order of acquittal is warranted.
It was further submitted that the view taken by the learned trial Court was a plausible view, which was on appreciation of the evidences on record and therefore the High Court had committed a grave error in reversing the judgment and order of acquittal passed by the learned trial Court and convicting the accused-appellant herein.
The Supreme Court however referring to the decision of the Apex Court in the case of Kuldeep Singh v. Commissioner of Police (1999) 2 SCC 10, observed that
“if a decision is arrived at on the basis of no evidence or thoroughly unreliable evidence and no reasonable person would act upon it, the order would be perverse. But if there is some evidence on record which is acceptable and which could be relied upon, the conclusions would not be treated as perverse and the findings would not be interfered with.”
On the contentions made by the appellant that there are contradictions between two dying declaration of the deceased, the Court has held that, “When there are multiple dying declarations, each dying declaration has to be separately assessed and evaluated on its own merits.”
The Court after going through all the facts presented and contentions made observed that,
“As per dying declaration it has been proved that the deceased was set ablaze by pouring kerosene on her. The act of the accused falls in clause fourthly of Section 300 IPC.”
Thus, the Apex Court has found no reason to interfere with the impugned judgement passed by the High Court of Karnataka at Bengaluru and upheld the judgement of Conviction.
Read the judgment here;
Dowry-Death