Naved Khan and Praveen Kumar alias Shailesh Kumar alias Anshu vs State of U.P.

Heard Learned Counsel for parties and perused the record.

This order shall also dispose of the prayer for grant of suspension of sentence in Criminal Appeal No. 160 of 2009.

Learned Counsel for appellants submitted that the names of accused-appellants appeared first time in the statement of a co-accused, who surrendered before Court. It is also a submission of Learned Counsel that merely on the basis of recovery of certain articles which are of daily use and are easily available in the market, accused-appellants have been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for life u/s 364-A, besides conviction and sentence u/s 392 I.P.C. Learned Counsel contends that there was no test identification parade in respect of accused-appellants, nor for the recovered articles.

Learned Counsel further contends that the victim was recovered from the custody of co-accused persons, who have since been acquitted by trial court and since it is the first offence of accused-appellants, no useful purpose would be served by keeping them in jail only on the basis of a weak type of evidence which has been heavily relied upon by trial court.

As submissions of Learned Counsel are based on established facts emerging from the records of trial court, learned State Counsel does not have any serious ground to refute the same.

In view of all the aforesaid, we accept the prayer for grant of suspension of jail sentence as well as stay of recovery of fine qua appellants Naved Khan, son of Late Hasib Khan alias Achchey, resident of Mahmood Nagar, Police Station-Malihabad, District-Lucknow, and Praveen Kumar, alias Shailesh Kumar alias Anshu, son of Late Jagat Narain Dwivedi, resident of Village-Sohanwa, Police Station-Bakshi Ka Talab, District-Lucknow. It is thus directed that the jail sentence as well as recovery of fine qua appellants Naved Khan and Praveen Kumar shall remain suspended during the pendency of appeal and they shall be released on bail subject to the satisfaction of learned Sessions Judge, Lucknow besides furnishing undertaking before him that they shall report to the police station concerned weekly at 10 O''clock on every Monday. In case of violation of any condition of bail, this order shall stand withdrawn without reference to Court.