TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2007 (6) TMI 512
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....323 read with Section 149 IPC. 2. Seven appeals were filed by eight of accused persons. As noted above, the High Court directed acquittal of the respondents while disposing of the appeal of Vishal and Anil and altered the conviction of Gangadhar. 3. The background facts in a nutshell are as follows: The accused persons had gone for a pleasure trip to Manali in the year 1994. They had some joint photographs. These photographs were in possession of accused Anil Kumar alias Babba. There was some dispute regarding the delivery of these photographs. The complainant side wanted to have the photographs while Babba did not want to part with those photographs. However, on 16.6.1995, around 9/8.OO P.M. the accused persons, namely, Sanjiv Kumar ali....
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....ge-sheet was filed. The trial Court found the accused persons guilty, convicted and sentenced them as aforesaid. 4. The High Court found that no definite role was ascribed to the respondents, and there was no evidence on record with regard to the sharing of common object by the respondents. 5. Learned counsel for the appellant-State submitted that presence of acquitted respondents has been accepted both by the Trial Court and the High Court. That being so, their conviction under Section 149 was clearly in order and the High Court should not have interfered with the same. 6. There is no appearance on behalf of the respondents in spite of service of notice. 7. As noted above, the High Court noted that the prosecution has not even remotely....
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.... after mutual consultation, but that is by no means necessary. It may be formed at any stage by all or a few members of the assembly and the other members may just join and adopt it. Once formed, it need not continue to be the same. It may be modified or altered or abandoned at any stage. The expression in prosecution of common object as appearing in Section 149 have to be strictly construed as equivalent to in order to attain the common object . It must be immediately connected with the common object by virtue of the nature of the object. There must be community of object and the object may exist only up to a particular stage, and not thereafter. Members of an unlawful assembly may have community of object up to certain point beyond which ....
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....ubsequently become unlawful. It is not necessary that the intention or the purpose, which is necessary to render an assembly an unlawful one comes into existence at the outset. The time of forming an unlawful intent is not material. An assembly which, at its commencement or even for some time thereafter, is lawful, may subsequently become unlawful. In other words it can develop during the course of incident at the spot eo instante. 10. Section 149, IPC consists of two parts. The first part of the section means that the offence to be committed in prosecution of the common object must be one which is committed with a view to accomplish the common object. In order that the offence may fall within the first part, the offence must be connected ....
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....uld generally be an offence which the members of the unlawful assembly knew was likely to be committed in prosecution of the common object. That, however, does not make the converse proposition true; there may be cases which would come within the second part but not within the first part. The distinction between the two parts of Section 149 cannot be ignored or obliterated. In every case it would be an issue to be determined, whether the offence committed falls within the first part or it was an offence such as the members of the assembly knew to be likely to be committed in prosecution of the common object and falls within the second part. However, there may be cases which would be within first part of the offences committed in prosecution....