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Patna,(BiharTimes): A division bench of the Patna High Court comprising Justice V N Sinha and Justice A K Lal on Friday acquitted all the 11 accused in Nagari massacre of November 11, 1998. They were all suspected to be the activists of Ranvir Sena. |
Ten people, said to be CPI ML supporters, were gunned down and two others injured at Nagari under Piro police station of Bhojpur district. The victims were Sudarshan Paswan, Sunil Kumar, Bijay Kumar Chaurasia, Amar Nath Chaurasia, Ramashish Paswan, Lal Babu Paswan, Ghaffar Ansari, Ayodhya Paswan, Babloo Paswan and Bashishtha Sao. Jharokha Ali and Qayamuddin Ansari were injured in the incident.
Overruling the lower court judgement the High Court held that the prosecution witnesses 3 and 13 failed to prove that the 11 accused could be identified under the moonlight at 8:30 PM on the day of massacre. The informant in the case also failed to prove that the accused could be identified in the light of the generator running at his flour mill.
The judges did not believe the prosecution version that prosecution witness 13 was examined by the investigating officer (IO) of the case after five days of the incident, but he disclosed the names of 11 Ranvir Sena men as accused in the case after 12 years.
The judges said that “the conduct of prosecution witness 3 indicates he is in the habit of falsely implicating the accused persons.”
It was on August 12, 2010, additional district and sessions judge I, Ara, Ajay Kumar Srivastava had awarded capital punishment to three massacre accused––Bhushan Singh, Ravindra Singh and Sudarshan Pandey––and life imprisonment to eight others––Shalik Pandey, Anil Singh, Arvind Pandey, Shaligram Pandey, Janeshwar Singh, Birendra Pandey, Dadan Pandey and Birendra Pandey. The trial court had acquitted three accused while two accused had died during the pendency of the case.
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