Absconding Appellant Cannot Stall Appeal: Allahabad HC Decides 42-Year-Old Section 307 Case on Merits
Srimati Phulmati fled after getting bail in 1982 and never appeared again. Allahabad High Court refused to wait indefinitely and dismissed her appeal, upholding four years’ rigorous imprisonment for pushing a neighbour into a well.
A criminal appeal filed in 1982 has finally been decided by the Allahabad High Court after the appellant, Srimati Phulmati, spent over four decades evading the court while enjoying the liberty of bail granted on 6 July 1982. Justice Vani Ranjan Agrawal, sitting singly, declined to adjourn the matter any further, applied the six propositions laid down by the Supreme Court in K.S. Panduranga v. State of Karnataka (2013) 3 SCC 721, and examined the appeal on its merits with the assistance of the Additional Government Advocate for the State. Finding the trial court’s appreciation of evidence well-reasoned and unimpeachable, the Court dismissed the appeal and directed the trial court to arrest Phulmati so that she could serve the four-year rigorous imprisonment imposed upon her for the offence under Section 307 IPC.
The Incident of 7 May 1980
The prosecution case arose from an incident on the evening of 7 May 1980 near the well of the Leprosy Hospital, Kanpur. The complainant, Govindi Devi, had earlier mortgaged her jewellery through her neighbour Srimati Phulmati at a jeweller’s shop in Lal Bangla for Rs. 500. Govindi Devi paid Rs. 500 to Phulmati to redeem it. The two women went together to Lal Bangla, retrieved the jewellery, and began walking home.
While returning at dusk, Phulmati asked Govindi Devi to sit near the well to rest. A moment later, with the alleged intention of robbing the money and jewellery and killing her, Phulmati pushed Govindi Devi into the well. Govindi Devi sustained injuries on falling, held on to the wall of the well, and raised an alarm. Bystanders — Lakshmi, Ramnath, and Phool Singh — pulled her out using a rope and a danda.
Dr. T.N. Mehrotra examined Govindi Devi at 3:30 AM and confirmed serious injuries including a fractured left radius bone, with swelling measuring 6 cm x 4 cm on the left wrist, consistent with a fall into a well around dusk on that date. The injury report and the X-ray confirmation were exhibited as Exts. ka-1 and ka-2.
The Trial and Conviction in 1982
Sessions Trial No. 537/M/1980 was taken up before the XII Additional District and Sessions Judge, Kanpur. The prosecution examined ten witnesses. Vishwanath Prasad (P.W.2), a pharmacist at Ursala Hospital, arrived at the scene after hearing a commotion and helped pull the victim out with a rope. Devdutt (P.W.3), the jeweller, testified about the mortgage and redemption of jewellery and proved the jewellery items as material exhibits. Govindi Devi (P.W.5) narrated the entire sequence from redeeming her jewellery to being pushed into the well. Three eye-witnesses — Chottey Lal (P.W.4), Phool Singh (P.W.6), and Babulal (P.W.7) — corroborated the prosecution version and confirmed that they aided in pulling the victim out. The Investigating Officer (P.W.10), SHO Rakesh Chandra Sharma, conducted the investigation, prepared the recovery memo of the jewellery, drew the site plan, and filed the charge sheet against Phulmati.
Documentary evidence placed on record included the injury report, the X-ray report, the written complaint, the recovery memo, the chik FIR, the GD entries, the site plan, and the charge sheet.
Phulmati, in her statement under Section 313 Cr.P.C., denied the allegations in their entirety. She stated she had been falsely implicated, that she had never gone to the jeweller with Govindi Devi, and that she had not pushed the complainant into the well.
The trial court, after considering oral, documentary, and medical evidence, held that the prosecution had proved Phulmati’s guilt under Section 307 IPC beyond reasonable doubt. By judgment dated 2 July 1982, she was convicted and sentenced to four years of rigorous imprisonment.
Four Decades of Absconding
Phulmati filed Criminal Appeal No. 1629 of 1982 before the High Court and was granted bail on 6 July 1982 upon admission of the appeal. She then ceased to participate in the proceedings and has not appeared since.
The procedural history that followed spans three decades of failed enforcement. A bailable warrant was issued by a coordinate bench on 26 April 2007. The Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kanpur Nagar, reported in July 2007 that Phulmati was not residing at the given address. Another bailable warrant was issued on 5 April 2013; the CJM again reported in May 2013 that she was not found at the address, and the landlord, one Raj Kumar Sahu @ Khanna, stated he had no information about her. On 21 May 2013, process under Section 82 and Section 83 Cr.P.C. was issued. By March 2014, the CJM confirmed she remained untraced.
On 16 October 2014, proceedings under Section 446 Cr.P.C. were initiated against the sureties. As of October 2024, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Kanpur Nagar, reported that the relevant bail bonds could not be traced and therefore notice could not even be issued to the sureties.
By August 2026, non-bailable warrants had also been issued and returned unexecuted.
Whether the Court Is Bound to Wait Indefinitely
With no counsel appearing for Phulmati and no prospect of her being traced, the Court confronted the question directly: whether it was obliged to adjourn the hearing perpetually until the absconding appellant was located and produced.
Justice Agrawal turned to the Supreme Court’s judgment in K.S. Panduranga v. State of Karnataka (2013) 3 SCC 721, which distilled the legal position into six propositions after a comprehensive analysis of prior decisions. The Court extracted the relevant principles: a High Court cannot dismiss an appeal for non-prosecution without examining the merits; the court is not bound to adjourn if both the appellant and counsel are absent; and, crucially, it may dispose of the appeal after perusing the record and the trial court judgment. The principle that an in-custody accused unable to attend on their own warrants an adjournment or appointment of State-funded counsel was noted — but was plainly inapplicable here, since Phulmati was at large on bail of her own choosing.
The Court accepted that the huge pendency of cases before it also weighed against passing the matter over indefinitely. With the legal position clear, Justice Agrawal proceeded to examine the appeal on its merits.
Merits: Eye-Witness Testimony and Independent Corroboration
The State, through its Additional Government Advocate Sri Rahul Asthana, supported the impugned judgment and submitted that it suffered from no illegality or infirmity, having been passed after proper appreciation of oral, documentary, and medical evidence.
The High Court agreed. It observed that P.W.2 Vishwanath Prasad, P.W.3 Devdutt, P.W.4 Chottey Lal, and P.W.7 Babulal were independent witnesses who had no connection with the complainant and bore no enmity towards the accused. The complainant, P.W.5 Govindi Devi, gave a detailed account corroborated by medical evidence and documentary exhibits. The delay in lodging the written complaint — the incident occurred around dusk and the report was lodged at 1:30 AM — was noted but held not to discredit the witnesses or cast suspicion on the prosecution version.
The Court found that the trial judge had elaborated a well-reasoned and detailed judgment, scrutinising each vital aspect of the case and properly appraising the testimony of prosecution witnesses. There was, in the Court’s view, no case or circumstance emerging from the evidence that could benefit the appellant.
It held that the finding of guilt under Section 307 IPC had been correctly recorded and that the sentence of four years’ rigorous imprisonment was “just punishment and would meet the ends of justice.”
Outcome
On 11 August 2026, the High Court dismissed Criminal Appeal No. 1629 of 1982. The appeal was found to lack merit.
Since Phulmati remains at large, the Court directed the trial court to leave no stone unturned in ensuring her arrest so that she can serve out the sentence imposed by the trial court judgment dated 2 July 1982. A certified copy of the order was directed to be sent to the court below forthwith for necessary information and follow-up action.