The Court agreed that the head of the raiding party had no reason to falsely implicate the accused.
Further, it stated that the petitioners’ submission that the veterinary expert could not issue a certificate with respect to an animal always found in the wild, indicated that they accepted the incident.
It said that the dispute was regarding only whether the meat was a deer’s. In that regard, the Court said there was no necessity for the accused to bake it in a lonely place over a camp fire.
Hence, it concluded that the accused were rightly convicted and upheld the order of the trial court.
However, considering that the accused were in their 60s and 70s, the Court reduced their sentence to jail time already undergone and imposed a fine of ₹25,000 each.
Source: Barandbench
