Justice In Twilight Years : Why Did Allahabad High Court Acquit 100-Yr-Old Accused In 1982 Murder Case?

In its 23-page Judgment, a bench of Justice Chandra Dhari Singh and Justice Sanjiv Kumar made certain pertinent observations regarding the age of the accused.

The Court remarked that when a person stands before the Court at the twilight of existence, the insistence on penal consequences, after decades of procedural delay, risks transforming justice into a ritual divorced from the purpose it intends.

The Court added that when the system itself has been unable to deliver finality within a reasonable time, Courts are justified in adopting a tempered, human approach while fashioning relief.

The Court further pointed out that the anxiety, uncertainty and social consequences suffered by the accused over decades cannot be ignored while assessing what justice now demands.

Briefly put, it was the case of the prosecution that on August 9, 1982, the informant and his brother (the deceased) were returning home when they met Maiku, who was armed with a gun, Satti Din, who was armed with a spear/ballam) and the appellant-Dhani Ram, who was armed with an axe/farsa.

Satti Din and Dhani Ram (appellant) allegedly exhorted Maiku to kill Gunuwa as he had once got his pistol seized and also taken away his six bighas of land.

Due to previous enmity, Maiku shot at him. The bullet hit the deceased on his back, whereby he fell down and died.

Hearing the noise of the gunshot, 4 persons rushed toward the place of the incident and tried to intervene; the accused persons, however, ran away.

In July 1984, the Additional Sessions Judge, Hamirpur, convicted Satti Din and Dhani Ram under Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

The main accused, Maiku, had absconded. Satti Din passed away during the pendency of his appeal and thus, only Dhani Ram remained before the HC as the sole surviving appellant.

Arguments

Senior Advocate Anil Srivastava, assisted by Advocate Ram Bahadur, submitted that the appellant is about 100 years of age and that he has only been assigned the role of exhortation.

It was submitted that the main accused person, i.e. Maiku, who had allegedly caused firearm injuries to the deceased, was never arrested by the police.

The AGA SN Tiwari, on the other hand, opposed the criminal appeal. However, he also conceded that the accused-appellant is now 100 year old.

High Court's observations

Analysing the case as well as the evidence on record, the High Court found the testimonies of the two key witnesses and other documentary evidences, to be fundamentally untrustworthy for the following reasons :

• (i)Contradiction in the genesis of occurrence.
• (ii)Conduct unbecoming of an eye witness.
• (iii)Omission in the FIR, and
• (iv)Inherent improbabilities.

The Bench also pointed out a critical discrepancy between the ocular and medical evidence.

It noted that while the prosecution witnesses claimed that after being shot, the deceased fell to the ground, and Satti Din then pierced his chest with a spear, the post-mortem report described Injury No. 5 as a punctured wound with a direction from “anterior to backward and slightly upward”.

The Court noted that such an upward trajectory was legally and scientifically improbable if the deceased was lying flat on the ground.

Furthermore, the Court also doubted the FIR itself. The division bench noted that while the informant admitted that the ink of his thumb impression was 'royal blue', the FIR was actually written in 'blue-black' ink.

Against this backdrop, the Court concluded that the FIR might have been prepared after the arrival of the investigating officer with due consideration

The HC also took into account that fact that while appellant-Dhani Ram was alleged to be armed with an axe (farsa), the medical report showed no injury caused by such a weapon.

Thus, holding that the genesis and manner of the incident is doubtful, and the prosecution suppressed the origin of the occurrence, the Court concluded that the appellant was entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

While the acquittal was secured on evidentiary grounds, the Court also noted that Dhani Ram is now about 100 years who has spent nearly 40 years on bail under the shadow of a pending appeal.

Justice Chandra Dhari Singh, writing for the Bench, observed:

"Justice is not an abstraction divorced from human conditions. The law cannot be oblivious to the reality that advancing age brings with its physical fragility, dependence and a narrowing horizon of life."

The Court emphasised that delay of such magnitude is not a mere administrative lapse; it becomes a substantive factor affecting fairness.

“A criminal process that stretches across generation ceases to be only a mechanism of accountability and assumes, in itself, the character of punishment,” the bench remarked.

Consequently, the High Court set aside the conviction and the appeal was allowed and the appellant was acquitted of all charges.