The Bombay High Court, while upholding a lower court order, convicted five of a family to five-year rigorous imprisonment for culpable homicide.

The lower court had earlier dropped murder charges and convicted them for culpable homicide.The five, Kailash Subhash Paradeshi (23), Manohar Subhash Paradeshi (21), Vinod alias Bhaiyya Subhash Paradeshi, (18), Ashok Narayan Paradeshi (40) and Deepak Babulal Paradeshi (25), had assaulted their relative Babulal Pardeshi to avenge a complaint he had made against them to the police in Dhule in 1996.

The conviction was based on the testimonies of the wife and children of the deceased. As per the prosecution case, the accused had gone to Babulal’s house on June 30, 1996 when the deceased was sleeping. They assaulted him with sharp weapons hit his daughter Rekha who tried to intervene. Babulal’s wife Anusayabai rushed to the police station and called the police who then took the injured Babulal to a hospital where he died.

The sessions court had accepted the evidence of the three eyewitnesses — wife, daughter and son of the deceased — and sentenced the accused to five-year imprisonment under section 304 (II) (Culpable homicide not amounting to murder). The murder charge was dropped as the “accused had no intention to cause death of Babulal though they could have knowledge that he may die as a result of their assault”.

Accepting the testimony Rekha, the court observed, “Her deposition was more significant. For, she is an injured witness. It is well settled that an injured witness testimony cannot be lightly brushed aside. Normally, an injured witness is unlikely to allow the real culprit to go scot free.”