Supreme Court: In a set of two criminal appeals assailing the Jharkhand High Court’s judgment upholding the separate judgments of conviction and orders of sentence passed by the Trial Court convicting the accused persons for the offence punishable under Section of the (‘IPC’), the Division Bench of Dipankar Datta and Sandeep Mehta*, JJ. found that the prosecution failed to prove the chain of incriminating circumstances against the accused persons by convincing evidence and beyond the shadow of doubt, hence, held that the Trial Court, as well as the High Court, erred while appreciating the evidence. Therefore, the Court set aside the impugned decisions and acquitted the accused persons.
Background
The accused persons were accused of killing their sister-in-law (‘deceased’). The deceased was married to the brother of the accused persons, after the death of her husband (the deceased’s husband) the deceased resided with her three children at the same house/ disputed property where the accused persons lived. Even though the late husband of the deceased had partitioned a part of the house in favour of the accused persons, they were still pressuring the deceased to give up her remaining share in the property. Subsequently, the deceased lodged a complaint against the accused persons under Section read with Section of the . On 11-03-1997, when the children returned home after school time they found their house locked and could not find their mother. Subsequently, the disappearance was reported to the police officials, who rather than registering any complaint advised the maternal uncle to continue the search. When the efforts to search the deceased failed a missing person’s report was lodged on 12-03-1997. After the police officials broke open the lock in the presence of panch witnesses the dead body of the deceased was found lying inside the room.
Analysis and Decision
The Court said that it was undisputed that the prosecution’s case was based on purely circumstantial evidence in the form of motive and the theory of last seen together since no witness saw the alleged incident. The death of the deceased was homicidal was duly proved by the Medical Officer in his evidence, wherein a large number of injuries were noted on the dead body and the cause of death was opined to be strangulation.
The Court reiterated the well-established principle of criminal jurisprudence that conviction on a charge of murder may be based purely on circumstantial evidence, provided that such evidence is deemed credible and trustworthy. From the chain of incriminating circumstances, no reasonable doubt can be entertained about the accused person’s innocence, demonstrating that it was the accused and none other who committed the offence.
Placing reliance on Sharad Birdhichand Sharda v. State of Maharashtra , the Court noted the following conditions which must be fulfilled before a case against an accused can be said to be fully established:
(1) the circumstances from which the conclusion of guilt is to be drawn should be fully established.
(2) the facts so established should be consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused, that is to say, they should not be explainable on any other hypothesis except that the accused is guilty.
(3) the circumstances should be of a conclusive nature and tendency,
(4) they should exclude every possible hypothesis except the one to be proved, and
(5) there must be a chain of evidence so complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and must show that in all human probability, the act must have been done by the accused.
Testing the circumstances portrayed by the prosecution on ‘theory of motive’ and ‘last seen theory’ to establish the charge of murder, the Court said that-
“It is trite law that proof of motive is not sine qua non in a case of murder. However, in a case based purely on circumstantial evidence, motive if properly established, assumes great significance and would definitely provide an important corroborative link in the chain of incriminating circumstances and strengthen the case of prosecution.”
Perusing the witness statements, the Court noted that omnibus allegations were made against the accused persons that they used to quarrel with the deceased in relation to the property in question. However, the Court opined that merely because such quarrels were going on between the accused persons and the deceased, that by itself could not be a ground to impute motive to the accused persons for murder. The prosecution considered the quarrel in the morning as the immediate cause of the incident, however, the Court said that upon close scrutiny of the depositions of neighbours, nothing was found in their evidence which could even remotely suggest that there had been any quarrel between the accused persons and the deceased on the day of the incident. Hence, the Court stated that there was a total lack of evidence to convince the Court that there was any immediate strife on the fateful day which could have fuelled the accused persons with such rage that they were impelled to murder the deceased.
Regarding the complaint under Section read with Section of the lodged by the deceased against the accused persons, the Court said that the said complaint never saw the light of the day, neither it was placed on record with the chargesheet nor did any of the prosecution witnesses bother to prove the same during the evidence. In light of this, the Court held that the trial Court as well as the High Court erred in holding that the prosecution was able to prove the motive for the murder against the accused persons beyond all manner of doubt.
In respect of the theory of ‘last seen together’- i.e., that the deceased and the accused persons were the only persons present in the disputed property, thereby, trying to shift the burden of proof by Section of the on the accused persons to explain the circumstances under which the deceased was found murdered, the Court said that-
“It is a cardinal principle of criminal jurisprudence that Section 106 shall apply and the onus to explain would shift on to the accused only after the prosecution succeeds in establishing the basic facts from which a reasonable inference can be drawn regarding the existence of certain other facts which are within the special knowledge of the accused.”
The Court added that if the prosecution fails to establish a complete chain of circumstances in the first place, then the accused’s failure to discharge the burden under Section 106 becomes irrelevant. The Court pointed out that nothing was found in the deposition of deceased’s son to even remotely suggest that any or all of the accused persons were present in the house or that they had quarrelled with his mother when he left for school along with his brother.
Further, the Court also pointed out that the prosecution failed to show why the other children of the deceased were not examined, hence, failure to examine them in evidence called for the drawing of adverse inference thereby, further denting the credibility of the prosecution’s case.
Conclusively, the Court viewed that the prosecution failed to prove the chain of incriminating circumstances against the accused persons. Resultantly, the Court set aside the impugned judgments passed by the High Court and Trial Court, thereby acquitting the accused persons. The Court also extended the benefit of the judgment to a third accused person who did not prefer an appeal against the High Court’s decision.
CASE DETAILS
| Citation: Appellants : Nusrat Parween Respondents : State of Jharkhand | Advocates who appeared in this case For Petitioner(s): Mr. Rajeev Singh, AOR; Mr. Samant Singh, Adv.; Ms. Pushpanjali Singh, Adv. For Respondent(s): Mr. Gopal Prasad, AOR; Ms. Tulika Mukherjee, AOR |
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