Supreme Court Sets Aside Conviction of BHMS Student for Killing Classmate

The Supreme Court recently set free an undergraduate student of a homeopathy course, by setting aside his conviction in a case of killing his friend in 2010 after finding the absence of motive.

Court held that in cases purely based on circumstantial evidence, the lack of motive could raise serious questions and might even render the chain of evidence as doubtful because the presence of motive does the job of explaining the circumstantial evidence.

A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma held that the High Court had erred in arriving at the finding of guilt and in upholding the verdict of the Trial Court.

Acquitting appellant Vaibhav of the offences punishable under Sections 302 IPC and Section 5 read with 25(1)(a) of Arms Act, the bench found the circumstantial evidence on record was not consistent and left a reasonable possibility of an alternate outcome i.e. of innocence of the appellant on the charges of murder and illegal usage of fire arm.

"The present case ticks the boxes of an accidental gunshot injury, both in theory and in fact. The possibility of a homicidal death is very weak and no direct nexus exists to conclude that the trigger was pulled by the appellant," the court said. It found the counter probabilities and inconsistencies in the chain of circumstances had not been explained and its benefits should have gone to the accused.

However, the court upheld the conviction of the appellant of the charges of destruction of evidence and sentenced him to the period undergone by him, for he tried to dispose of the body of the deceased Mangesh, who was studying in his class at Bagla Homeopathy Medical College, Arvat Chandrapur, Maharashtra.

Court noted that the version of the prosecution suffered from inherent inconsistencies and doubts and in such a scenario, the inability of the appellant to explain certain circumstances could not be made the basis to relieve the prosecution from discharging its primary burden.

On September 16, 2010, both friends left the college together on the scooter belonging to Mangesh. However, as Mangesh did not reach home, his father lodged a missing person report and the next day, the body of the deceased was found. The Trial Court found that the appellant had killed Mangesh using the service gun belonging to his father when he came to drop him after college. The appellant's friend Vishal was found guilty of destruction of evidence. On appeal, the Bombay High Court upheld his conviction and acquitted Vishal.

The appellant took two primary defenses before the High Court – impossibility of homicidal death in light of the trajectory of the bullet and report pointing towards accidental death. He asserted that the death of Mangesh was caused by his father’s pistol at his residence. He also deposed that as he heard the gunshot, he came out and saw the dead body of Mangesh lying in pool of blood. He got scared of his father and tried to clean up the scene and in doing so, he removed the dead body of the deceased and cleaned the blood by using phenyl. He also submitted that there was no motive for the appellant to have caused the death of Mangesh and the relationship between him and the deceased was friendly.

Examining the matter, the bench said, no doubt, the deceased was shot by the pistol belonging to the father of the appellant and in his house, but the pertinent question that craved for an answer is – who pulled the trigger? Despite two rounds of litigation, the question was yet to find an answer.

Going by the report on the trajectory of the bullet, the bench said it could have been possible only if the deceased was sitting and looking downwards towards the barrel of the pistol from a close distance. It was only then that the bullet could have hit the ventilator despite exiting from the lower part of the skull. In fact, this was precisely the defence of the appellant - that the deceased, on finding the service pistol of his father, got curious, picked it up, started looking into it with one eye from a close distance and accidentally pressed the trigger.

The probability of the version put across by the appellant is on the higher side as compared to the version put across by the prosecution, which simply does not give any explanation for the trajectory of the bullet, the bench said.

In the case, the court found that the High Court merely brushed aside the defence of the appellant by referring to the subsequent conduct of the appellant and by raising adverse inference.

"In gunshot cases wherein the nature of death – suicidal, accidental or homicidal – is not ascertainable from direct evidence, multiple factors are taken into account for arriving at a conclusion," the bench said.

The court explained such factors included, but were not limited to, the point of entrance, the size of wound, direction of wound, position of wound, possible distance of gunshot, number of wounds, position of weapon, trajectory of bullet after entering into the human body, position of exit wound (if bullet had exited), direction of exit wound, direction of the bullet after exit, distance travelled by the bullet after exit, nature of final impact on surface (if any) etc. All such factors, to the extent of their applicability to the facts of the case, needed to be examined by the court before arriving at a judicial finding of fact.

Undoubtedly, no such analysis could be found in the impugned judgment, the bench said.

In the case, the bench pointed out that the inability of the appellant to explain certain aspects also weighed against him.

"Undoubtedly, in a case based on circumstantial evidence, facts indicating subsequent conduct are relevant facts under Section 8 of the Evidence Act. Equally, the inconsistencies in the version of the appellant are also relevant. However, the occasion to examine the version/defence of the appellant could have arisen only if the prosecution had succeeded in discharging its primary burden beyond reasonable doubt," it said.

The bench further said, in law, there is a significant difference in the evidentiary burden to be discharged by the prosecution and the accused. Whereas, the former is expected to discharge its burden beyond reasonable doubt, the latter is only required to prove a defence on the anvil of preponderance of probabilities. If the accused leads defence evidence in the course of a criminal trial, the same ought to be tested as probable or improbable in the facts and circumstances of the case.

In the case, the bench held the defence taken by the accused since the beginning of the case was not tested by the Trial Court and the High Court, which had certainly resulted into a failure of justice.

The court also pointed out in a case based on circumstantial evidence, motive is relevant. However, it is not conclusive of the matter.

"There is no rule of law that the absence of motive would ipso facto dismember the chain of evidence and would lead to automatic acquittal of the accused. It is so because the weight of other evidence needs to be seen and if the remaining evidence is sufficient to prove guilt, motive may not hold relevance. But a complete absence of motive is certainly a circumstance which may weigh in favour of the accused," it said.

In the facts of the present case, the court said, any evidence of enmity between the appellant and the deceased would have made suspicious the act of the appellant of taking the deceased to his home prior to his death. However, since the evidence suggested that they were friends, the fact that the appellant brought him home could not be termed as per-se incriminating. Therefore, motive explained the circumstances on record and enabled the court to draw better inference in a case based on circumstantial evidence, court held. 

"No doubt, the subsequent acts of cleaning up the crime scene and making false enquiries amount to disappearance of evidence and raise grave suspicion against the appellant. However, mere suspicion, no matter how grave, cannot take the place of proof in a criminal trial", it said.

The bench further said, a young boy studying in first year of college, with no criminal background and with no motive in sight, would certainly have become scared on seeing that his friend had accidentally shot himself in the living room of his house with the pistol belonging to his father and was lying in a pool of blood.

The subsequent conduct of cleaning up the scene and restoring the living room in its original shape, although punishable in law, does not become so unnatural that it could be made the basis to convict him for the commission of murder without additional evidence to that effect. More so, when such conclusion is not consistent with the surrounding evidence on record, especially medical evidence, the bench said.

The court held that the conclusion drawn by the courts below was not supported by medical evidence and was not consistent with the bullet injury and trajectory.

Case Title: Vaibhav Vs The State of Maharashtra
Download judgment here