Testimony of an injured witness is accorded a special status in law as injury to a witness is an inbuilt guarantee of his presence at the scene of crime

The case involved double murder with injuries to two injured witnesses. The incident happened in the house of the complainant. Family members of the complainant were sleeping in different areas of the house. Accused persons arrived at the door of the house of the complainant with dangerous weapons such as Pharma, Spears, Gandasa and lathi. While barking at the dogs, the complainant woke up and noticed the presence of the accused persons in the light of a torch and lantern hanging onto the branch of JackFruit. Accused persons inflicted blows on the sons of the complainant resulting in their death and when the complainant and his wife went to rescue their sons, they were also assaulted by accused persons and injuries caused to them.

Testimony of injured witnesses was important and they were also eye-witnesses to the incident. Testimonies of injured eye-witnesses revealing as to how they suffered injuries at hands of accused persons and how their sons were murdered by accused persons with the help of dangerous weapons.

Testimony of injured witnesses is accorded a special status in law. This is as a consequence of fact that injury to the witness is an inbuilt guarantee of his presence at the scene of the crime and an injured witness will not let his actual assailant go unpunished merely intending to falsely implicate a third party.

Testimony of injured witnesses regarding the manner of assault by accused persons corroborated by injury report of injured persons, post mortem report of deceased persons and deposition of other prosecution witnesses. Evidence proving participation of accused persons in alleged incident and part played by them in the alleged assault. Conviction of accused persons based on such evidence, upheld by the High Court.

Appearing Counsel/s : G.K. Mehrotra, Arun Sinha, B.M. Sahai, Manendra Nath Rai, S. P. Tripathi, Govt. Advocate

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