Nearly 35 years after he was acquitted by a sessions court,the Allahabad High Court Tuesday convicted a man,now 75,of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Four other accused have died during this period. Sohan Lal along with his co-accused Sita Ram,Shiv Kumar,Rameshwar and Braham Singh had killed his cousin Subhash at Poothari village in Ghaziabad on January 6,1978. Ram Avatar,Subhashs brother,was injured in the attack. The murder took place a day after Sohan Lal had a verbal duel with Subhash and Ram Avatar over removing heaps of mud from his field and then dumping it on the approach road. Sohan had objected to this. The accused surrendered in court a few days later. Sohan Lal was acquitted on April 30,1979. The state governments appeal against the acquittal was pending in the high court since. On Wednesday,a bench of Justices Vinod Prasad and Surendra Kumar sentenced Sohan Lal and fined him Rs 10,000,which ,if deposited,would be given to Ram Avatar. We find the entire approach adopted by the trial court was perverse,sans common sense and it emerges that exercise was coated with exaggerated rule of acquittal. Some of the findings are based on pure conjecture and surmises. No prudent man could have ever reached the conclusions that have been arrived at by the learned trial judge, the bench said. The trial court had acquitted them on the grounds that the statements of witnesses were doubtful. The court had taken serious note of the defence argument that they were being implicated because of family rivalry. However,the HC found the statement of witnesses cogent and reliable. It also maintained that there was no evidence of deep-rooted family rivalry.
