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Synopsis

The Supreme Court recently acquitted seven men in a 1985 abduction and murder case of a woman, finding reasonable doubts, which were irreconcilable.

A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma said that the motive of a pending property dispute as alleged could operate both ways. "Motive has a bearing only when the evidence on record is sufficient to prove the ingredients of the offences under consideration", it opined. 

Without the proof of foundational facts, the case of the prosecution cannot succeed on the presence of motive alone, the bench held. 

"The accused persons and the eyewitnesses belong to the same family and the presence of a property-related dispute is evident. In a hypothetical sense, both the sides could benefit from implicating the other. In such circumstances, placing reliance upon motive alone could be a double-edged sword. We say no more," the bench observed.

The court also found that the case of the prosecution was full of glaring doubts as regards the offence of abduction.

It noted that the case related to offence of murder was entirely dependent on circumstantial evidence. However, the post mortem report indicated that the death of the deceased was unnatural and the commission of murder could not be ruled out.

But there is no direct evidence on record to prove the commission of murder by the accused persons, it concluded.

The case related to the alleged abduction and murder of one Neelam, who was alleged to be residing in the house of her own deceased father, along with her husband, on August 30, 1985, in Munger in Bihar.

Seven accused namely Krishna Nandan Singh, Ram Nandan Singh, Raj Nandan Singh, Shyam Nandan Singh, Bhagwan Singh, Vijay Singh and Tanik Singh faced trial in the case. The trial court held five of them guilty and sentenced them to life imprisonment. Two of them, Vijay and Tanik, were acquitted.

The Patna High Court on appeal upheld the trial court's order and set aside the acquittal of two others.

Examining the matter, the top court found that none of the three eye witnesses, all relatives of the deceased, were found to be reliable when examined in light of evidence of defence witnesses. Secondly, none of the eyewitnesses was an independent witness of fact. 

"Ordinarily, there is no rule of law to discard the testimonies of the witnesses merely because they were known to the victim or belonged to her family. For, an offence may be committed in circumstances that only the family members are present at the place of occurrence in natural course. However, the present case does not fall in such category. In the facts of the present case, the natural presence of the eye witnesses at the place of occurrence is under serious doubt, and for unexplained reasons, the naturally present public persons were not examined as witnesses in the matter," the court said.

The bench also pointed out that when the version put forth by the interested witnesses comes under a shadow of doubt, the rule of prudence demands that the independent public witnesses must be examined and corroborating material must be gathered. More so, when public witnesses were readily available and the offence has not taken place in the bounds of closed walls, it stressed.

The bench also expressed reservations over the prosecution's claim that the deceased was residing in the house of her father. The investigating officer had inspected the house and no direct material, except some make-up articles, could be gathered so as to indicate that she was actually residing there, it pointed out.

The high court had noted that one other woman was also residing there but since she was a widow, the found make-up articles could not have belonged to her as there was no need for her to put on make-up being a widow. 

"In our opinion, the observation of the High Court is not only legally untenable but also highly objectionable. A sweeping observation of this nature is not commensurate with the sensitivity and neutrality expected from a court of law, specifically when the same is not made out from any evidence on record," the top court said regarding the high court's observation.

Court stressed that the prosecution had failed to examine even one cohabitant to prove the said fact.

Furthermore, no personal belongings of the deceased, such as clothes, footwear, utensils etc., could be found in the entire house, it highlighted.

The appellants had also flagged a discrepancy on the time of death between the version of the witnesses and the post-mortem report.

"A post mortem report is generally not considered as conclusive evidence of the facts mentioned in the report regarding the cause of death, time of death etc. It could always be corroborated with other direct evidence on record such as ocular evidence of the eye witnesses. However, when there is no other credible evidence on record to contradict the report, the facts stated in the post mortem report are generally taken as true. In the present matter, the evidence of the eye witnesses has been declared as wholly unreliable including on the aspect of time of death. Thus, there is no reason to doubt the post mortem report and the findings therein," the bench said.

It also observed that the approach of the high court in reversing the acquittal of the two accused was not in line with the settled law pertaining to reversal of acquittals. It found that the high court took a cursory view of the matter and reversed the acquittal without arriving at any finding of illegality or perversity or impossibility of the trial court’s view or non-appreciation of evidence by the trial court.

"We do not intend to say that the High Court could not have appreciated the evidence on record in its exercise of appellate powers. No doubt, the High Court was well within its powers to do so. However, in order to reverse a finding of acquittal, a higher threshold is required. For, the presumption of innocence operating in favour of an accused through out the trial gets concretised with a finding of acquittal by the trial court. Thus, such a finding could not be reversed merely because the possibility of an alternate view was alive. Rather, the view taken by the trial court must be held to be completely unsustainable and not a probable view," the bench said.

In the case, the top court said, the link of causation between the accused persons and the alleged offence was conspicuously missing.

The circumstantial evidence emanating from the facts surrounding the offence of abduction, such as the testimonies of eye witnesses, has failed to meet the test of proof and cannot be termed as proved in the eyes of law, it held.

"Therefore, the foundation of circumstantial evidence having fallen down, no inference could be drawn from it to infer the commission of the offence under Section 302 IPC by the accused persons. It is trite law that in a case based on circumstantial evidence, the chain of evidence must be complete and must give out an inescapable conclusion of guilt. In the present case, the prosecution case is far from meeting that standard," the bench said.

Court, thus, set aside the judgments of the high court and the trial court, finding the conviction of the accused-appellants as unsustainable and directed their release if lying in custody.

Case Title: Vijay Singh alias Vijay Kr Sharma Vs The State of Bihar