The Supreme Court of India acquitted a man convicted for the murder of his six-year-old stepdaughter, holding that recovery evidence obtained when the accused was not in police custody could not be treated as substantive incriminating material.
The Bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar and Justice K. Vinod Chandran allowed the criminal appeal and set aside the conviction affirmed by the High Court, observing that the prosecution failed to establish a complete chain of circumstantial evidence beyond reasonable doubt.
The accused was convicted by the trial court for allegedly murdering his stepdaughter after a domestic dispute on October 5, 2018. The prosecution relied on three principal circumstances the “last seen together” theory; recovery of burnt bones and skeletal remains at the instance of the accused; and DNA evidence matching certain recovered remains with the biological parents of the deceased child.
The High Court upheld the conviction, also invoking Section 106 of the Evidence Act on the ground that the accused failed to explain how he knew the location of the remains.
The Supreme Court’s central focus was whether the recovery of remains could be admitted under Section 27 of the Evidence Act.
The disclosure statement was recorded at 10:30 a.m. on October 13, 2018, but the arrest memo showed that the accused was formally arrested only at 10:00 p.m. the same day. Thus, at the time of the alleged disclosure, he was not in police custody.
Reiterating settled law, the Court held that Section 27 applies only when information leading to discovery is given by a person “in the custody of a police officer.” Since that statutory condition was not fulfilled, the recovery could not be treated as admissible under Section 27.
While the Court accepted that the accused’s conduct in leading the police to the site of recovery could be considered under Section 8 of the Evidence Act, it clarified that such conduct is merely a corroborative circumstance and cannot independently sustain a conviction.
The Court also found serious inconsistencies in the prosecution’s timeline. The accused had been arrested in a separate assault case on October 6 and released on October 8. Yet, the missing complaint regarding the child was registered only on October 11.
Notably, the First Information Statement recorded that the child went missing on the night of October 6—after the accused had already been arrested. This discrepancy, coupled with delays and contradictions, led the Court to conclude that the “last seen together” theory was unreliable.
The forensic report confirmed that vertebrae and teeth recovered from a canal matched the DNA of the biological parents, establishing the child’s death. However, the skull and bones recovered from another location did not match.
The Court held that while DNA evidence proved the death of the child, it did not prove that the accused was responsible. Without a complete and unbroken chain of circumstances, the conviction could not stand.
Observing that suspicion cannot replace proof, the Court held that only two weak circumstances remained—knowledge of the recovery site and partial DNA matching—both insufficient to conclusively establish guilt.
Allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court set aside the conviction and ordered the accused’s immediate release, if not required in any other case.
Case Details
Case Title: Rohit Jangde Versus The State of Chhattisgarh
Citation: JURISHOUR-04-SC-2026
Case No.: Criminal Appeal No.689 of 2026
Date: 17/02/2026
