The Supreme Court convicts a teacher who assaulted a class II student leading to vision loss.

The Supreme Court has partly allowed an appeal of an accused who was charged with Section 326 IPC. The Hon’ble Court reduced the sentence from 2 years of imprisonment to 1 year imprisonment with an additional fine amount of Rs.50000/-. The facts leading to the present appeal are that appellant working as a teacher in Rani Chennamma School, Hospet had assaulted PW-2, a second standard student, with a wooden stick for not wearing uniform shoes resulting in injury to the left eye of the said student. The injured PW-2 was taken to the hospital at Hospet and, thereafter, taken to the M.M. Joshi Hospital at Hubli where PW-2 had undergone surgery twice. In spite of the treatment, there was loss of eye-sight on the left eye of PW-2. On the complaint lodged  by PW-1 who is father of PW-2,  law was set in motion.

Upon consideration of the evidence adduced by the prosecution, the Trial Court acquitted the appellant holding that there are contradictions in the evidence of eye witnesses viz. PW-3 and PW-4. The Trial Court also observed that the injured child (PW-2) was tutored before he was examined in the witness box and therefore, the evidence of child witness (PW-2) cannot form the basis for conviction. The Trial Court also held that eyewitnesses viz. PW-3 and PW-4 are related to PW-1 and that there was a delay of 25 days in lodging the FIR and on those findings, the trial Court acquitted the accused-appellant. The High Court set aside the order of acquittal and convicted the appellant under Section 326 IPC and sentenced him to undergo imprisonment for a period of two years.
 
The Supreme Court observed thus:

“The only question falling for consideration is the correctness of the conviction under Section 326 and the nature of the offence. Though the stick wielded by the appellant has been marked as MO1, there is no material to show that the stick that was wielded by the appellant was a dangerous weapon. In the absence of such evidence, in our view, the conviction of the appellant under Section 326 may not be warranted; but the offence would fall under Section 325 IPC, “voluntarily causing grievous hurt”.  Coming to the quantum of sentence, the occurrence was of the year 1996. Keeping in view the passage of time and in the facts and circumstances of the present case, the sentence of imprisonment is reduced to one year with additional fine of Rs.50,000/-” 
 

C. R. Kariyappa vs. State of Karnataka