Court No. - 81
Case :- CRIMINAL APPEAL No. - 490 of 1985 Appellant :- Vijai Shanker Respondent :- State Counsel for Appellant :- U.N. Sharma Counsel for Respondent :- A.G.A. Hon'ble Dinesh Kumar Singh-I,J. List has been revised.
Sri G.P. Singh, learned A.G.A. for the State is present.
C.J.M., Ghaziabad has submitted its report dated 20.10.2019 according to which the appellant has died.
This is an appeal filed against the judgment and order dated 15.7.1982 whereby the respondents have been acquitted of charge under Section 500 of IPC.
The appeal was admitted by this Court's order dated 25.2.1985. Because of death of appellant, none has appeared and hence, judgment o the trial court has been perused by court itself. Lower court record is yet to be received.
I have gone through the judgment of the lower court and find that prosecution/complainant case was that he was respectable person, who was paying Rs. 4,000/- as the revenue since prior to U.P. Zamindari Abolition and Land Reforms Act and was owning 1200 bighas of land. From 1952 to 1974, he was M.L.A. from the side of Congress Party. On 27.4.1975, one accident occurred in which Bhoomihar and Harijans of the villages, wherein the complainant was residing, fought with each other in which several persons were killed. In newspaper 'Gandiv' dated 2.5.1975, a news item was published that complainant/appellant had given this news that thirty people had died in the said occurrence and out of them, the dead bodies of 27 were taken out of burning fire. One Hari was thrown into fire alive.
On the basis of said newspaper item, it was alleged by the complainant that his reputation had gone down, therefore, offence under Section 500 IPC was made out. The trial court after having taken into consideration the entire evidence, has given the view that the publisher of the paper 'Gandiv' was not made accused in this case and that whatever news item was published, was published bonafidely. There was no malice in order to diminish the reputation of the appellant. It is also recorded in the judgment that appellant remained member of Legislative Assembly even after publishing of this news item, therefore it was held that no deterioration had taken place in the esteem of the appellant in the eyes of public, hence offence was not made out. In view of above, I do not find any infirmity in the said judgment and order dated 15.7.1982, therefore, appeal deserves to be dismissed and is accordingly dismissed on merits.
Order Date :- 27.11.2019 A.P. Pandey