Delhi Court Acquits 4 Men In Acid Attack Case After Evidence Destroyed, 18-Month FIR Delay

Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) Hargurvarinder Singh Jaggi of Saket Court acquitted Preet Pal, his father Ramesh, and two others, Suresh Chand and Bablu Kumar, of charges under Sections 326B (throwing or attempting to throw acid), 195A (threatening a witness) and 506-II (criminal intimidation) read with Section 34 of the IPC, in a judgment running to 39 pages and pronounced on September 28, 2026; over seven years after the alleged incident.

What the prosecution alleged

According to the case set up by the complainant, Renu, on July 9, 2019, while she was walking home after work near Shiv Mandir in Sangam Vihar, four men arrived on two motorcycles and threw acid on her back and waist from behind. She alleged that on turning around she saw a bottle in the hand of accused Preet Pal, and that the men threatened her, warning that if she did not withdraw an earlier POCSO Act case she had filed against Pal, they would throw acid on her daughter too and kill her.

The complaint records the threat in the accused's own words, as originally stated: "Abhi toh tumhare upar acid dala hai, agar tum apni ladkiwala case vapas nhi logi toh, tumhari beti k upar bhi tezab dalenge aur tumhe jaan se maar denge" - "We have thrown acid on you now; if you do not withdraw your daughter's case, we will throw acid on your daughter as well and kill you."

Passersby poured water on her and a PCR call was made; she was taken to Safdarjung Hospital, where her medico-legal certificate recorded 1% chemical burn injuries on her back and waist, and a forensic report later confirmed hydrochloric acid on her seized clothes.

"A fatal unexplained 18-month delay" 

The judgment's first and most significant finding concerned the gap between the incident and the FIR. Although police recorded the complainant's statement and seized her clothes on the very day of the incident, no FIR was registered until January 7, 2021; eighteen months later. The investigating officer, ASI Ramesh Chand, admitted in cross-examination that he had no knowledge of why the case had been kept pending for so long.

The Court held: "Neither the chargesheet nor any prosecution witness explains why criminal law was kept in abeyance for 1.5 years. Applying the ratio of Thulia Kali v. State of Tamil Nadu – (1972) 3 SCC 393 and Dilawar Singh v. State of Delhi – (2007) 12 SCC 641, such unexplained delay affords ample time for consultation, deliberation, and false implication, striking at the very root of prosecution spontaneity."

The eyewitness who didn't see the act

The entire prosecution case rested on the uncorroborated testimony of the complainant, the sole eyewitness. The Court found her account undermined by several factors: she admitted in cross-examination that she turned around only after feeling the burning sensation, meaning she did not actually see who threw the liquid; she introduced, for the first time in a recalled cross-examination, a claim that the incident occurred behind the temple, an "improvement" absent from her original complaint; and while she testified she never revisited the crime scene after the incident, the investigating officer's site plan; prepared over 18 months later, bore her signature.

"The benefit of pervasive doubt... must inevitably extend to the accused persons."

No CCTV, no recovery- then the evidence burned

Despite five to seven passersby having gathered at the scene, the Court noted that police joined no independent public witness, collected no CCTV footage from the temple or nearby shops, and obtained no call detail records to place the accused at the scene. No acid bottle or motorcycle was ever recovered.

The complainant's burnt clothes, the case's principal physical evidence; were never produced at trial either: an official report confirmed they were destroyed in a fire at the Malkhana Nazarat Branch, South District, on August 23, 2024, before the trial could conclude.

A prior POCSO acquittal and a concealed relationship 

The defence's case was that the entire prosecution was retaliatory. Preet Pal testified that he had lived in a live-in relationship with the complainant from 2016 to 2019, and left her after discovering her husband was alive and serving a sentence in Hardoi Jail, Uttar Pradesh. He produced five PCR call records from the period of the relationship, and crucially; a certified copy of a March 28, 2025 judgment in which a POCSO Court had already acquitted him in the earlier case the complainant cited as the attack's motive, finding her account "contradictory and unconvincing."

The Court accepted that this history of prior litigation and a suppressed relationship supplied "a compelling reason for false implication."

An alibi the prosecution never challenged 

Co-accused Ramesh and Suresh Chand set up a defence of alibi, producing a former village Gram Pradhan who testified, backed by official MNREGA employment records, that both men were working as labourers in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, on the day of the incident. The Court noted that the prosecution led no evidence to rebut these official records, "leaving their alibi completely intact."

The verdict 

Weighing the cumulative effect of the delay, the eyewitness's contradictions, the missing corroborative evidence, the destroyed case property, and the unrebutted defence, the Court concluded: "This Court holds that the prosecution has miserably failed to prove the charges under Sections 326B/34, 195A/34, and 506-II/34 IPC against any of the accused persons beyond reasonable doubt. The benefit of pervasive doubt, systemic investigative lapses, unexplained delay, and unrefuted defence evidence must inevitably extend to the accused persons."

All four accused were acquitted and ordered released on execution of personal bonds of ₹10,000 each with one surety, to remain in force for six months.