The Supreme court in a criminal appeal has observed that the election is a mechanism which ultimately represents the will of the people. The essence of the electoral system should be to ensure freedom of voters to exercise their free choice.

The present appeals arose from the impugned order of the high court which dismissed the said appeals preferred by the appellants and confirmed the order and judgement of the trial court convicting the appellant under Sec 323 and 147 IPC. The facts of the case were that an FIR was lodged at Paatan Police Station by the first informant – Rajeev Ranjan Tiwari alleging inter alia that on the eve of general election, he was working as a worker of Bhartiya Janta Party at village Golhana under Paatan Police Station and was issuing slips to the voters towards two hundred yards north away from the polling booth.The accused persons who belong to another village Naudiha came armed with lathis, sticks, country made pistols and asked him to stop issuing voter slips and handover the voters list which he was possessing and on his refusal the accused persons started physically beating him with hands, fists lathis and sticks; the brother of the first informant upon knowing about the incident came to rescue him and at that time accused fired gun shot with his country made pistol. An FIR was registered at about 2:00 p.m. on the very day against 16 accused named persons for the offences under Sections 147, 148, 149, 307, 326, 324, 323 IPC and Section 27 of the Arms Act. At this stage, it is required to be noted that even some of the accused also sustained injuries. After conclusion of the investigation, the investigating officer filed chargesheet against 15 accused including the appellants herein. On the conclusion of the full fledged trial, the learned trial court judge convicted the appellants. Feeling aggrieved, the appellants preferred appeal and the High Court upheld the conviction of the trial  court.

The learned senior advocate appearing on behalf of the appellants argued that the motive has not been established and proved and that the common object was alleged to be to cast bogus votes, which was never cast. It is submitted that even the voter slip was also available with all other parties and therefore the motive as per the prosecution case is questionable. It is further submitted that even otherwise, the courts below have materially erred in convicting the accused for the offence under Section 323 IPC.

The learned counsel appearing for state of Jharkhand submitted that all the appellants have been guilty for the offence of rioting punishable under Section 147 IPC. It is submitted that for the offence of rioting, there has to be, i) an unlawful assembly of 5 or more persons ii) the unlawful assembly must use force or violence and iii) the force or violence used by an unlawful assembly or by any member thereof must be in prosecution of the common object of such assembly in which case every member of such assembly is guilty of the offence of rioting. It is submitted that in the present case, all the ingredients of rioting as defined under Section 146 of the IPC has been established and proved. It is submitted that so far as the offence of voluntarily causing hurt as defined under Section 321 IPC and punishable under Section 323 IPC is concerned, it is submitted that the injuries sustained by PW5 to PW8 and PW12 are simple injuries while PW10 sustained grievous injuries.

The supreme court bench comprising Justices Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah opined that all the witnesses are consistent in their statements and they have fully supported the case of the prosecution. The court referred to  the decision in  MP v. Mansingh [(2003) 10 SCC 414] that “the evidence of injured witnesses has greater evidentiary value and unless compelling reasons exist, their statements are not to be discarded lightly”.  Under the circumstances, the courts below have not committed any error in convicting the accused.

It is further observed that democracy and free elections are a part of the basic structure of the Constitution and therefore any attempt of booth capturing or bogus voting should be dealt with iron hands since it ultimately affects the rule of law and democracy. Hence, the appeal stands dismissed.