Witnesses – Evidentiary value, when witness not trustworthy: Held: For trial u/s. 302 IPC, if a witness is branded as untrustworthy having allegedly twisted the facts and made contrary statement, it is not safe to impose conviction on the basis of statement made by such witness – When there is an effort to falsely implicate one accused person, statement made by such an eyewitness cannot be relied without strong corroboration – On facts, on account of previous enmity between the parties, accused persons armed with weapons inflicted injuries resulting in death of one and injuries to the informant, his son and the other eye-witness – In appeal, A1 was convicted only u/s. 323 while acquitting u/s. s. 302/34, A2 was convicted and sentenced u/s. 302 and 323 read with s. 34, while A 4 was acquitted of charges and A3 died – Statement of witnesses-informant and other eye-witness were recorded twice, firstly, in the trial against A1, A2 and A3 and secondly, in the trial against A4 – Both the prosecution witnesses are disbelieved in the second trial since their statements were contradictory, the facts were twisted and improvements were made, thus, no reliance can be made upon such statement – Also the recovery of weapons from A1 and A2 was not proved – Thus, not safe to convict A2 for offence u/s. 302/34 IPC on the basis of statement of such eyewitness – Judgment of the courts below convicting A2 for offence u/s. 302/34 set aside – However, conviction of A2 for the offence u/s. 323/34 not interfered with – Acquittal of A1 u/s. 302/34 upheld – Penal Code, 1860 – ss. 302/34, 323/34. [Paras 16 - 22]
As published in the Supreme Court Reports, Supreme Court of India. Text from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open data set (Dattam Labs), CC BY 4.0.
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