Noida: A local court acquitted three men of murder charges on Tuesday after a decade-long trial, after the victim’s widow told the court she had put her thumb impression on a blank sheet of paper to submit the complaint after her husband was shot dead over a political rivalry. The victim’s three sons, the key eyewitnesses in the case, also turned hostile and testified that their father had been killed by another man, who was himself subsequently murdered.The case dates to Oct 24, 2016, when Meena Kumari filed a complaint accusing seven named persons — Ramu, Ramendra, Raju, Sahdev, Gullu, Bobby, and Mula — along with four unidentified persons, of killing her husband Jaibhagwan and injuring their three sons, Manish, Kuldeep, and Brajesh, while the family worked on their farmland.The main accused, Ramu, was killed the same day, with a separate FIR registered in that matter. Investigators found no evidence against Gullu, Bobby, and Mula, and their names were dropped from the chargesheet. Charges were framed against Ramendra, Raju, and Sahdev on Oct 4, 2017.The prosecution presented nine witnesses, including Meena Kumari and her three sons, who were not only eyewitnesses but had themselves been injured in the attack.However, during cross-examination, Meena Kumari said she had merely put her thumb impression on a blank sheet of paper on which someone else had written the application for registration of an FIR. She also acknowledged there was a political rivalry between two factions in the village, and that several of the accused named in the complaint belonged to the opposing camp.The prosecution’s case collapsed further when all three sons, testifying as prosecution witnesses, partially rejected the prosecution’s account, stating that their father had been killed solely by Ramu, and that the three accused were not present at the crime scene.Interestingly, Manish, Kuldeep, and Brajesh are themselves accused of murdering Ramu and facing trial in a separate case registered at the Jarcha police station.Additional sessions judge Chandra Mohan Srivastava noted that all the witnesses had attributed the killing to Ramu alone.“The plaintiff (Meena Kumari) filed a false complaint, naming seven individuals and four unidentified persons…The plaintiff only included these names at the behest of villagers due to village factionalism and mutual rivalry, a fact she herself admitted before the court,” the judgment stated. “The incident was committed by Ramu, but due to factionalism and rivalry in the village, the names of the accused were also included.”The court held that the prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt the charges under sections 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting armed with a weapon), 307/149 (attempted murder in unlawful assembly), 302/149 (murder in unlawful assembly), and 323/149 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Indian Penal Code against Ramendra, Raju, and Sahdev. The three were acquitted and directed to execute a personal bond of Rs 30,000 each, along with two sureties of the same amount, in compliance with Section 437-A of the CrPC.
