Use Of Lethal Firearm To Abduct Child Perfectly Satisfies Offence U/S 364A IPC: Supreme Court Confirms Conviction In Kidnapping Case

The Apex Court was considering an appeal challenging the judgment of the Allahabad High Court upholding the order of conviction passed by the Trial Court in a case registered under Sections 364A/368 of the IPC. The appellants have been undergoing a sentence of life imprisonment.

The Division Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta held, “We have scrutinized this contention in the light of the evidence. The very act of stopping young, defenceless children on their way to school by brandishing a .315 bore country-made pistol inherently constitutes a severe threat to cause death or hurt. The use of a lethal firearm to compel compliance and abduct the child perfectly satisfies the second condition of Section 364A as enunciated in Shaik Ahmed (supra).”

“The threat to life was proven by the overt use of a deadly firearm at the time of abduction, squarely satisfying the threshold of Section 364A IPC as interpreted in Shaik Ahmed”, it added.

Advocate Arif Ali represented the Appellant while AOR Sakshi Kakkar represented the Respondent.

Factual Background

A first information report was lodged by the first informant that his son was stopped at pistol point by two unknown persons while he was on his way to school. They forcibly lifted the first informant's 8-year-old son and drove away. On the cries of the sisters who were accompanying the boy, other people came on the spot and chased the accused on motorbikes, who managed to escape into the jungle. During the investigation, the police, on the pointing out of accused, recovered the abductee from a village from a hut-like house. The abductee was found in the western room of this house, sitting with a woman on a cot. The child, on being questioned, stated the criminals had detained him in this room and the woman and another man, whom the woman referred to as Pappu, used to guard him. They had taken off his clothes and had hidden them.

A .315 bore country-made pistol and two live cartridges were recovered on the pointing out of Harjindra Singh, whose police remand had been obtained. A chargesheet under Section 25 of the Arms Act was filed against Harjindra Singh for the commission of offences under Sections 364A and 368 IPC. A separate chargesheet under Sections 364A and 368 IPC was filed against Bahaar Ali. Upon committal, the Sessions Judge framed charges under Sections 364A and 368 IPC against the six accused. As the litigation ensued, the High Court did not find any illegality in the order of conviction and sentence granted by the Sessions Court to the appellants. Aggrieved thereby, the appellants approached the High Court.

Reasoning

Considering that the appellants claimed the principle of parity with the other co-accused who were acquitted by the Trial Court, the Bench stated that the evidence against Dilbag Singh and Harjindra Singh was of a substantially distinct and higher footing, involving direct ocular identification during the act of kidnapping and precise recoveries under Section 27 of the Evidence Act. As per the Bench, the acquittal of the co-accused had no bearing on the appellants’ culpability.

The Bench refused to accept the contention that the entire prosecution case rested on the testimony of highly interested and partisan witnesses. The Bench stated that the informant, being the father of the abducted child, immediately went in pursuit of the abductors into the jungle. When the pursuit failed, he lodged the FIR promptly. As per the Bench, he was not an eyewitness to the abduction itself, but he was a vital witness to the lodging of the FIR and the subsequent recovery of the child on the pointing out of Dilbag Singh, which he personally witnessed.

The Bench noted that the actual eyewitnesses to the kidnapping were the victim’s sisters, who were cycling to school with him, and despite exhaustive cross-examination, the defence failed to extract any material contradiction from these young witnesses. The Bench also reiterated that the use of a lethal firearm to compel compliance and abduct the child perfectly satisfied the second condition of Section 364A. It was further held that the demand for a ransom of Rs 5 lakh was unequivocally proven through consistent oral testimonies of the family and the Investigating Officer.

The Bench also stated, “The lack of a CDR from a rural telephone exchange in 2003 cannot be permitted to paralyze the criminal justice system when the substantive oral evidence remains cogent, credible, and completely unimpeached. Therefore, the High Court rightly concluded that the demand for ransom was established beyond reasonable doubt.”

On a perusal of the evidence, the Bench further noticed that the identity of the perpetrators was decisively cemented by the recoveries made pursuant to their own disclosures. Dilbag Singh’s custodial statement led directly to the recovery of the kidnapped child and the co-accused Dalveer Kaur in an adjoining district. Similarly, Harjindra Singh, after surrendering, led the police to the exact bush near a pipal tree where a .315 bore pistol and live cartridges used in the crime were recovered. “These direct recoveries under Section 27 of Indian Evidence Act completely negate the necessity of a formal TIP and establish the appellants’ guilt irrefutably”, it stated.

Thus, dismissing the appeal, the Bench upheld the conviction of Dilbag Singh @ Mitthu and Harjindra Singh under Sections 364A and 368 of the IPC (and Section 25 of the Arms Act 30 for Harjindra Singh). “The sentence of life imprisonment awarded to them is sustained”, it ordered.

Cause Title: Harjindra Singh v. The State of U.P. (Neutral Citation: 2026 INSC 569)

Appearance

Appellant: Advocate Arif Ali, AOR Rizwan Ahmad, Advocates Mujahid Ahmed, Pankaj Tiwari, Mohd Tauheed, Himanshu Gupta, Amir Kaleem, Syed Faizan Ali

Respondent: AOR Sakshi Kakkar, Advocate Pragya Singh

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