MP High Court Acquits Murder Convicts After Trial Court Relied On FSL Report From An Unrelated Case

The Madhya Pradesh High Court at Jabalpur has acquitted two men convicted of murder more than a decade ago, holding that a careless trial court had relied on an FSL report that had nothing to do with their case, and that serious doubts remained over whether the deceased was even alive when the First Information Report was recorded in his name.

A division bench of Justice Vivek Agarwal and Justice Avanindra Kumar Singh set aside the conviction of Tulsiram Rajpal and Harprasad, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the Special Sessions Judge, Damoh, in 2012 for the murder of Pyarelal Gadariya. A third appellant, Mohan alias Bacchu, had died in 2014, and the appeal on his behalf had already abated.

According to the prosecution, on the evening of August 25, 2009, Pyarelal was performing Ganesh Pooja at his home with his wife, son and daughter when the appellants barged in, hurled abuse, and Tulsiram stabbed him in the stomach with a knife. Pyarelal reportedly lodged a police report before dying on the way to hospital.

Advocate Ajay Kumar Jain, for the appellants, argued that the conviction rested on planted eyewitnesses supposedly busy with the pooja, that there was no light at the spot, that the seized knife carried no blood as per the FSL report, and that the deceased's thumb impression on the FIR was suspect since he was known to sign documents. Government Advocate Abhishek Singh defended the trial court's verdict and sought dismissal of the appeal.

Writing the judgment, the bench flagged what it called a serious lapse by the trial court. It noticed that while writing its own judgment, the sessions court had relied on an FSL report, Exhibit P/25, that concerned an entirely different case, involving a sickle and lathis seized from other accused persons and different injured parties altogether. The trial court had even questioned the present appellants about this unrelated report during their examination under Section 313 of the CrPC, and used it while convicting them. "We are really surprised as to how this negligence was caused by the learned trial Court," the bench observed, adding that "on this ground alone judgment can be set aside," though it chose to examine the rest of the evidence on merit as well.

The bench then turned to the circumstances surrounding the FIR itself. It noted that the report had not been written in the handwriting of the investigating officer, Ashok Kumar Nanama, who could not name the police staffer who had actually drafted it despite being given repeated opportunities in cross-examination. This mattered, the court said, because there was a direct conflict in the prosecution's own account of when Pyarelal died, his son testified that he died right after leaving the police station, while his wife claimed he was alive until he reached the hospital. Crucially, no requisition for his medical examination had ever been filed, a document the court called mandatory if he had indeed been alive and sent for treatment. The doctor who received the body testified that he was already dead on arrival at the health centre.

"Non-filing of the said document along with the charge-sheet again lends credibility to this argument of defence that Pyarelal did not lodge the FIR and had already died," the court held, adding that it was not proved that the thumb impression on the document was even his.

The bench concluded that the conviction and sentence could not be sustained "due to the serious lapses in investigation and prosecution evidence," and acquitted both appellants of charges under Sections 450, 302 and 302/34 of the IPC. The court noted that Tulsiram had already spent over seven years in custody and Harprasad a little over three years.

Case Title: Tulsiram Rajpal and Others vs. The State of Madhya Pradesh

Date of Order: July 30, 2026

Bench: Justice Vivek Agarwal and Justice Avanindra Kumar Singh