Criminal Appeal no- 145 of 2017
Supreme court of India
BENCH: Hon’ble Mr Rohinton Fali Nariman, R. Hon’ble Mr Subhash Reddy, Hon’ble Mr Surya Kant
DATE OF JUDGEMENT: 3rd Oct 2019
RELEVANT SECTIONS:
- Section 302 IPC (Punishment for murder)
- Section 201 IPC (Causing disappearance of evidence of offence )
- Section 120B IPC (Punishment for criminal conspiracy)
BACK STORY
Mr Ishwari Lal Yadav and his wife believed in witch magic and wanted to achieve siddhi. She was proclaimed as guru mata. To fulfil her need to propitiate God, she asked her husband and her followers, who are also the culprits, to get a small child for human sacrifice.
Chirag, a two-year boy, went missing from the accused neighbourhood on 23rd Nov 2010. when the people started searching for him, they entered the accused house and found freshly mud mounds with blood, meat bowl and other ritual articles laying around. On being questioned the accused accepted her crime, stating that she had killed Chirag and while doing so had put on loud music so that no one could hear the crying. The mound was dug and Chirag body was extracted. The police send the body for postmortem. Later they also found some skeletal remain of another girl child at the accused house, who was identified as Manisha, a six-year-old girl, who went missing on 4th March 2010 from Bhilai Nagar.
FORENSIC REPORT
The postmortem report showed that Chirag’s body was beheaded, there were cut marks on his cheeks and his tongue was cut off. The blood found around the crime scene for the ritual purpose was found to be of Chirag, as shown in the FSL report. The skeletal remain of other victim was sent to DNA profiling, which showed that it belonged to Manisha.
JUDGEMENT
Depending on the heinous nature of the crime committed by the accused, the trial court had awarded death sentence but it was later modified by the high court as life imprisonment without parole. He further appealed at the Supreme court, which confirmed the judgement passed by the high court. The accused Ishwari Lal Yadav and Kiran Yadav were awarded rigorous life imprisonment under section 302, 120B and 201 of IPC along with fine of Rs.5000 each.