MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has held that for conviction under charges of criminal conspiracy, it is not necessary that the accused should have direct involvement in the crime or be physically present at the crime scene.
A bench of justices G Jayachandran and R Poornima observed so while confirming the conviction of eight persons for the murder of a man in Madurai in 2014 while hearing a batch of appeals filed by them challenging the life sentence imposed by a sessions court in 2022.
According to the prosecution, the deceased, Alagarsami, had enmity with the first accused Vijayalingam, who was his relative, over a Karuvelam tree contract. A criminal case was also pending against Alagarsami for allegedly trying to murder Vijayalingam.
In August 2014, all ten accused (including Vijayalingam’s minor son) gathered at Vijayalingam’s house at the advice of his nephew Neethirajan and planned to murder Alagarsami to ‘put an end to the issue’. This was reportedly overheard by one of the witnesses and he advised Alagarsami to settle the issue amicably. However, he decided to take legal recourse.
A week later when Alagarsami, his father-in-law, wife and minor daughter were waiting at the bus stop, all the accused except Neethirajan came to the spot and hacked him to death. Based on the statement of one of the accused Niranjan, who was inadvertently injured by another accused during the incident, the police registered two FIRs, one for Alagarsami and another for Niranjan, who died two days later.
Hearing the appeals, the judges rejected the contention of the convicts that some of their names were not in the FIR. “The FIR is not an encyclopaedia. When the offence is committed in furtherance of a conspiracy which is a crime hatched in secrecy, the law does not expect names of all the accused to be mentioned in the FIR,” they said.
They also opined that when about 10 persons surround a man and attack him indiscriminately, contradictions among the eye witnesses on minor aspects are bound to happen and the same will not affect the overall evidence incriminating the accused.
The judges also added that execution of the crime or physical presence at the time of execution is not required to punish a person for the offence under Section 120 B IPC (punishment for criminal conspiracy).