Penal Code, 1860 – ss.302/149 – Murder – Accused persons assaulted the victim and the informant somehow managed to escape and lodged the first information that victim was lying at the place of occurrence in an injured condition – Incident was witnessed by brother-in-law of the victim and another – Allegations that due to previous enmity, the seven accused persons formed unlawful assembly whereafter they assaulted the victim with a murderous intent – FIR lodged and chargesheet filed u/s.147/148/149/302 against the appellants – Trial court convicted the appellants u/s.302/148 – High Court modified the conviction by holding the appellants guilty of offence punishable u/s. 302 with the aid of u/s.149 – Correctness: Held: Though prosecution witnesses stated about the recovery of the weapons on the basis of information given by the accused persons, the manner in which the recoveries were made and the circumstances surrounding the recoveries made the recoveries highly suspect – That apart, the alleged recoveries were made after several days of the incident and no bloodstains etc. were found on the weapons – Doctor who had conducted the postmortem examination, deposed in his evidence that the seized weapons were not shown to him – Knives were also not produced in court – Besides, all the seizure witnesses turned hostile – Thus, s.27 of the Evidence Act cannot come to the aid of the prosecution – Moreover, the clothes of the accused were not seized and sent for forensic examination to find out whether there were any bloodstains – Such examination would have revealed whether there were any bloodstains on the clothes; whether those bloodstains were of human blood; and whether those matched the blood of the deceased – Material inconsistency in the evidence of prosecution witnesses – No doubt that the death of victim is homicidal – Medical evidence has also confirmed multiple stab injuries on his body leading to profuse bleeding and death – According to the prosecution, it is the accused who had committed murder of the victim – Thus, it is for the prosecution to connect the accused to the murder of the deceased by producing credible and legally admissible evidence – However, no credible evidence at all to connect the accused persons with the homicidal death of the victim – In such circumstances, the appellants entitled to the benefit of doubt – Evidence Act, 1872. [Paras 21, 24]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Headnotes prepared by: Himanshu Rai, Hony. Associate Editor (Verified by: Nidhi Jain, Editor). Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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