In Brief
In this criminal appeal, the accused were acquitted at trial but convicted by the High Court on appeal by the State for murder and causing grievous injury. The Supreme Court upheld the High Court's conviction, holding that the trial court's wholesale rejection of evidence from injured and related eyewitnesses (including the accused's own wife and daughter) based on minor contradictions was erroneous and perverse. The Court found the oral testimony of these witnesses, corroborated by medical evidence, was trustworthy and natural. Minor discrepancies in rustic witnesses' accounts do not discredit their core narrative. The intentional assault with lethal weapons resulting in death, coupled with the accused's common object, justified conviction under Section 302 read with 149 IPC. The appeal was dismissed.
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