The Gujarat high court has said that in cases involving charges of rioting, all the members of a mob should be held responsible for offences committed by any one of them. The observation came during a hearing on a nearly 13-year-old case of murder, dacoity and rioting in Ahmedabad's Shah-e-Alam area.
In November 2003, a riotous mb had intercepted commuters, committed dacoity, and even killed a pillion rider, Mukesh Panchal. Six of the 12 accused were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment by a lower court, but they challenged their conviction in the HC.
Upholding the conviction, a bench of Justice KS Jhaveri and Justice G B Shah observed last week, "Riots, resulting in serious injuries or even death, are of frequent occurrence in this state and cases relating to such riots require careful handling." "A large number of persons are involved and evidence is often entirely of partisan character. There is, moreover, great danger of innocent persons being implicated along with the guilty, owing to the tendency of parties to try to implicate falsely as many of their enemies as they can," they added.
They observed that the "law is very clear that if an offence is committed by any member of an unlawful assembly in furtherance of the common object of that assembly, every member of that unlawful assembly is guilty of that offence".
"Specific overt act of each member needs not be proved when the accused are proved to be members of that assembly," the bench added. With these observations, the HC rejected the defence argument that the accused were mere onlookers, saying their intention "to spread havoc in the city" was clear. But it reduced the sentence from life imprisonment to 10 years' jail.
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