New Delhi: The Supreme Court of India has dismissed criminal appeals filed by four convicts serving life imprisonment for the murder of one Balkishan, committed on June 3, 2000, holding that the absence of a specific eyewitness account of each accused firing upon the deceased is not fatal to the prosecution’s case when the accused acted as members of an unlawful assembly sharing a common object under Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code.
A bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and S.V.N. Bhatti, vide judgment dated March 11, 2026, upheld the concurrent findings of the trial court and the High Court, confirming both the conviction and the sentence imposed upon the appellants.
The appeals were filed after the appellants had been convicted under Sections 148 and 302 read with 149 of the Indian Penal Code and sentenced to one year of rigorous imprisonment and life imprisonment respectively, along with a fine of Rs. 500 each. They were acquitted of charges under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. One of the original six accused, Govind Singh (A-3), had died during the pendency of the proceedings, while the main accused, Vikram, remained absconding throughout.
The incident arose from a long-standing political rivalry between the main accused Vikram and the deceased Balkishan, who was the Chairman of a Watershed Committee. The enmity dated back to a 1994 panchayat election, in which the wife of the deceased had defeated the wife of Vikram.
On the morning of June 3, 2000, at around 8:15 a.m., all six accused persons alighted from a bus at the Tihuli bus stand, each armed with firearms. Vikram allegedly fired the first shot at the deceased, hitting his left hand. The deceased fled towards the village and took shelter in the house of one Rattan Lal (PW-6). The accused followed him inside, dragged him to the courtyard, and shot him in the temple at point-blank range. The deceased died instantly. An FIR was lodged the same day by Budha Ram (PW-2), the brother of the deceased.
Before the Supreme Court, the appellants contended that there was no reliable eyewitness to the second part of the incident, that is, the firing inside Rattan Lal’s house. They pointed out that Rattan Lal (PW-6), the sole independent witness, stated that he had neither seen the accused firing nor fleeing from his house, except for the main accused Vikram, and had only heard the gunshots.
It was further argued that the other prosecution witnesses were closely related to the deceased and that their testimonies were riddled with contradictions and improvements. The appellants also submitted that no weapons or incriminating material had been recovered from them, that the medical and forensic evidence did not conclusively establish their individual participation, and that there were procedural lapses in the investigation, including non-compliance with Sections 157 and 174 of the CrPC.
The Court rejected these contentions. It held that the mere absence of a specific eyewitness account of each accused firing upon the deceased was not fatal to the prosecution’s case, particularly when the evidence established that all the accused had arrived together at the bus stand armed with firearms and had thereafter chased the deceased to the house of Rattan Lal, where multiple shots were fired.
The Court observed that this conduct was sufficient to establish that the accused were members of an unlawful assembly sharing a common object, thereby attracting vicarious liability under Section 149 IPC.
Reaffirming settled legal principles, the Court held that for Section 149 IPC to apply, two elements must be established, i.e., the existence of an unlawful assembly and a common object. Once both are proved, every member of the assembly is vicariously liable for acts committed by any one of them in furtherance of that common object, regardless of whether a specific overt act is individually attributed to each member. The fact that all the accused alighted from the same bus armed with firearms was held to be sufficient in itself to draw the inference of a common object.
The post-mortem report and the evidence further established that the deceased suffered multiple gunshot wounds, including entry wounds near the right eye, on the chest, and on the lower back, along with three exit wounds. Approximately 40 pellets were recovered from the body, and the doctor opined that all injuries were caused by firearms and were sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death.
The Court held that the doctor’s inability to confirm whether the injuries were inflicted by one or multiple weapons did not detract from the weight of this evidence. The recovery of empty cartridges from the courtyard of Rattan Lal and the ballistic reports further corroborated the prosecution’s case.
On the procedural lapses alleged by the appellants, the Court held that the non-compliance with Section 157 CrPC was not proved by summoning the relevant Magistrate’s records and therefore could not be treated as fatal to the prosecution’s case.
The Court also observed that the continued abscondence of the main accused Vikram was itself indicative of a guilty conscience. Finding no illegality in the concurrent judgments of the courts below, the Supreme Court dismissed all the appeals and directed the appellants, who were on bail, to surrender forthwith to undergo the remaining portion of their sentence.
Case Title: Dablu Etc. v. State of Madhya Pradesh & Vinod @ Ajay v. State of Madhya Pradesh, Criminal Appeal Nos. 1819–1821 of 2011 and Criminal Appeal No. 1176 of 2012.
