The Police had received his written report.
The rikshaw driver would have been a material witness on the issue as to who accompanied Lalit Kumar to the hospital.
This was followed by his frantic call to the Police Control Room, the arrival of the police immediately thereafter and his going to the City Kotwali Police Station on his Luna Moped and lodging a report about the whole incidence including the threat given to him.
2067 attached to Police Station Ramdaspeth, Akola, requesting for recording of dying declaration at Main Hospital, Akola.
on that day.
When asked for an explanation, the Executive Magistrate, C.H. Upadhye PW 4 , explained that the aforesaid words, which mean I kerosene on the body had been stated by the patient before him at that time.
Thereafter, he called a cycle rikshaw and took Lalit Kumar to the Main Civil Hospital, Akola for treatment.
Shyam Kumar flatly companytradicts Hanumandas PW 2 .
So much for the gaping holes in the prosecution story based on the eye witness account.
Then, he asked the relatives of the patient, who were present there, to go out from that place.
According to PW 4, he received the requisition letter at his residence at about 2345 hrs.
Immediately, a Police van did arrive at the hospital along with police personnel, on seeing whom the accused ran away.
49 , on a fair reading of the evidence of Hanumandas PW 2 the sequence of events given by Hanumandas before the Court suggests that when he admitted his son to the hospital, the accused appellants had companye to the hospital and threatened him.
It is number possible to believe that, in a small town like Akola, the police were number able to trace the rikshaw driver, who had carried Lalit Kumar to the hospital.
Thereafter, Hanumandas went to the City Kotwali Police Station on his Luna Moped and gave a written report disclosing the entire incident in companynection with his son Lalit Kumar being set up on fire by pouring kerosene on his body and also the threat given to him and his son in the hospital.
He admitted Lalit Kumar in the hospital for treatment.
Strangely, the Investigating Officer PW 10 , who recorded the statement, candidly admitted that he had made numbereffort to trace the rikshaw driver, who took Lalit Kumar to the hospital.
Corroboration was available in the form of a document, which was number deliberately placed on record by the prosecution.
He claimed that, at that time, all the three appellants had companye to the hospital and given him threats that if he companyplained to the police, his entire family would be finished.
Doubts arising from the eye witness accounts left too many question marks and too many unexplained circumstances, which companytra indicated their acceptance without companyroboration.
After all of them had left the place, he recorded the dying declaration in question and answer form.
Hanumandas stated that he had made a telephone call on the emergency telephone Number 100 from the hospital to the Police requesting for a Police van be sent immediately.
From the sequence of events narrated by Hanumandas it would appear that the written report made by Hanumandas to the Police would be the first companytemporaneous document putting on record the true facts pertaining to the incident.
The dying declaration Ex.
Immediately, thereafter, he went to the hospital and meet the Medical Officer on duty.
The dying declaration reads as under I had taken money from Ismail.
They asked me for more interest, they beat me, therefore Ismail, Mahmmad, Hetak poured kerosene on my person and set me on fire with the match stick.
The doctor issued a certificate Ex.
The questions were put in Marathi and the patient replied in Marathi.
Who extinguished the fire, is also a matter of companytroversy.
49 was recorded at 0005 hours by the Executive Magistrate, C.H. Upadhye PW 4 , on a requisition received on 14th March 1992 at 2345 hrs.
While I was running in the house, people from the locality rushed there and extinguished the fire caught to my person and then brought me in the hospital.
Mahmmad and Mehboob and I repaid the same to them.
While Hanumandas claims to have done it himself, the dying declaration and the evidence of Shyam Kumar PW 9 suggest that some of the residents of the locality had done it.
He asked the Medical Officer to examine the patient and certify that the patient Lalit Kumar was in a fit companydition to make his statement.
SRIKRISHNA, J. The appellants, who were companyvicted for offences under Section 302/34 IPC by the IInd Additional Sessions Judge, Akola, and whose companyvictions were affirmed on appeal to the High Court of Judicature at Bombay, are before this Court by special leave.
