The Supreme Court has acquitted two persons convicted of murder after finding material discrepancies in the testimony of the prosecution’s eyewitnesses and serious deficiencies in the investigation, including the failure to establish the scene of the alleged crime or recover the firearms used in the shooting.
The Bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran held that although a witness cannot be treated as interested merely because of their relationship with the deceased, closer scrutiny becomes necessary when the surrounding circumstances reveal a “ring of falsity” in the testimony.
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The Court observed that the prosecution evidence did not lead exclusively to the guilt of the accused. Instead, the discrepancies and inconsistencies left open a reasonable hypothesis of innocence, entitling the appellants to the benefit of doubt.
The appeal arose from a murder allegedly committed following a dispute over the blockage of a drain that caused waterlogging in front of the deceased’s house. Five persons were prosecuted in the case. While three were acquitted by the Trial Court, the two appellants were convicted under Section 302 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 27 of the Arms Act.
According to the prosecution, a quarrel broke out when the accused arrived at the deceased’s house while he was bathing his buffalo. One appellant allegedly shot the deceased on the left side of his chest, while the other purportedly fired at members of the deceased’s family and injured them.
The High Court affirmed both the conviction and the sentence, following which the two convicts approached the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court noted that the prosecution principally relied upon the statements of the deceased’s sons, daughter and daughter-in-law. Although their accounts broadly supported the prosecution’s version, the Court found several contradictions between their evidence before the Trial Court and their earlier statements recorded under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The First Information Statement did not mention the presence of some of the persons who were subsequently projected as eyewitnesses or injured witnesses. The Court also noted that villagers had allegedly gathered at the spot after hearing the altercation, but none of them was produced as an eyewitness.
The deceased’s daughter claimed that she had hugged her father after he fell and that her clothes were stained with blood. However, the police neither seized those clothes nor sent them for forensic examination. Several material parts of her testimony had also not been disclosed in her police statement, leading the Court to doubt her presence at the scene.
Similarly, the deceased’s daughter-in-law claimed that pellets struck her and her two-and-a-half-year-old child. These allegations were not consistently reflected in her statement under Section 161 of the CrPC. The prosecution also failed to establish that the child had sustained any injury.
An independent witness claimed that he was accompanying one of the deceased’s sons when the incident occurred. However, the son did not state that this witness was with him. The independent witness’s earlier police statement also indicated that he arrived at the spot only after hearing the gunshots.
The Supreme Court further found significant inconsistencies concerning where the deceased was taken after the shooting. While some witnesses claimed that the body was taken to a hospital, the first informant stated that it was carried directly to the police station. The inquest report and the Investigating Officer’s evidence supported the latter version.
The Court described the decision to take the deceased to the police station instead of a hospital as surprising, particularly because the doctor who conducted the post-mortem stated that a person sustaining the fatal injury could have survived for three to six hours. One of the witnesses had also testified that the deceased had not died immediately and that she could feel his pulse when he was removed from the alleged crime scene.
The Court was also critical of the investigation. It noted that no proper reconnaissance of the alleged scene was undertaken and no site map was prepared. Consequently, the prosecution failed to establish crucial features such as the location of the hand pump and buffalo shed, the distance between the house and the alleged spot, and other physical details capable of corroborating the eyewitness accounts.
Nothing incriminating was recovered from the purported place of occurrence. The Investigating Officer attributed the absence of bloodstains and other physical evidence to heavy rainfall, but the Court found that the investigation suffered from wider deficiencies.
Neither the gun nor the pistol allegedly used in the crime was recovered. The investigating agency also did not attempt to secure the accused in police custody for the purpose of making recoveries.
Although a rod allegedly used for cleaning the barrel of a firearm was said to have been recovered from the house of one appellant, it was neither produced before the Trial Court nor formally brought into evidence.
The prosecution witnesses repeatedly described one of the firearms as a “licensed” weapon. However, the prosecution did not produce the firearm licence or any material showing the nature of the weapon covered by it.
The Supreme Court observed that a person cannot identify a weapon as licensed merely by looking at it. The reference by the witnesses to a licensed weapon, coupled with the failure of the prosecution to produce the licence, created an impression that an accused known to possess such a weapon might have been deliberately implicated.
“This smacks of premeditation to frame the accused, who is known to have a licensed weapon,” the Court remarked.
The Bench added that production of the licence would have at least established whether the accused had access to a particular type of firearm. It could also have facilitated forensic examination to determine whether the cartridge cover recovered from the deceased’s body was compatible with the weapon described in the licence.
The medical evidence also did not fully support the prosecution’s description of a violent brawl involving assaults with lathis and multiple firearm shots. The doctor who examined the alleged injured witnesses recorded mostly simple abrasions and expressed uncertainty about whether one injury had been caused by the butt of a gun or whether another was, in fact, a firearm injury.
The Court clarified that related witnesses are not automatically unreliable or interested witnesses. If an incident occurs in the courtyard of a family home, the presence of relatives would be natural and they would not be treated as chance witnesses.
In the present case, however, the prosecution did not clearly substantiate the alleged scene of occurrence. Combined with material contradictions in the witnesses’ accounts, this prevented the Court from placing unqualified reliance on their evidence.
The Bench referred to the principle laid down in Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra, under which the existence of a reasonable hypothesis of innocence prevents a court from recording a conviction.
While acknowledging that the principle is ordinarily applied in cases based entirely on circumstantial evidence, the Court held that it assumed relevance in the present matter because the purported direct eyewitness evidence was itself rendered doubtful by discrepancies and surrounding circumstances.
The Court also took note of the fact that the Trial Court had acquitted the other three accused despite specific overt acts being attributed to them, and that their acquittal had been affirmed by the High Court.
Finding it unsafe to sustain the conviction, the Supreme Court extended the benefit of doubt to both appellants and acquitted them. It directed that they be released immediately if they remained in custody and were not required in any other case. If they were already on bail, their bail bonds were ordered to stand cancelled.
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