Law Doesn't Require Eyewitnesses To Sign Inquest Report; Testimony Unaffected If Their Names Absent From Police Papers: Allahabad HC

A bench of Justice Salil Kumar Rai and Justice Ajay Kumar-II added that there is "absolutely no requirement in law of mentioning the details of the FIR, names of the accused or the names of the eye-witnesses or the gist of their statement nor it is required to be signed by any eye-witness".

Case in brief

Briefly put, as per the prosecution's case, a persistent civil land dispute had been pending since 1972 between the informant (Mahipal Singh/PW-1) and a co-villager named Chheda.

Ultimately, the Informant (PW-1) won the case, obtained an execution decree, and subsequently purchased the disputed ancestral land of one Brahma (father of the appellant-accused) at a court auction. This led to a deep-seated resentment and enmity between the accused party and the informant.

On the morning of April 10, 1998, at around 8:45 AM, the informant's son (Jagpal Singh/Deceased) was riding his bicycle alongside his brother-in-law (Shri Om/PW-2) to meet their legal counsel. On their way, both were ambushed by four individuals: Mukesh, Bablu, Leela, and the appellant Pravesh.

According to the prosecution, Mukesh exhorted his aides to kill the deceased, and hence, Pravesh and Leela initially struck the deceased with sticks (lathis), causing him to crash off his bicycle.

The attackers then relentlessly assaulted the deceased with country-made pistols and knives. PW-2 and the trailing informant (PW-1) shouted for help and fled to save their own lives after Mukesh pointed a firearm at them.

Deceased-Jagpal succumbed to his injuries on the spot. The trial court convicted all 4 accused and they all moved to the High Court in 2003.

During the pendency of their appeal, the other co-accused [Leela, Mukesh, and Bablu alias Pappu] passed away, and hence, the proceedings against them abated. The HC was left with the appeal qua appellant Pravesh only.

Court's observations

At the outset, the bench addressed the argument of the defence that the 2 key eyewitnesses, the informant (PW-1) and brother-in-law of the deceased (PW-2), could not have been actually present at the crime scene because their signatures were entirely missing from the inquest report and the recovery memos prepared by the police.

Rejecting this argument, the Court referred to Section 174 CrPC (Section 194 BNSS) to note that the sole object of these proceedings is merely to ascertain whether a person died under suspicious circumstances or met with an unnatural death and, if so, what was its apparent cause.

Relying on the Supreme Court Judgment Shakila Khader v. Nausher Gama 1995, the High Court observed that an inquest under Section 174 CrPC is concerned with establishing the cause of death, and only the evidence necessary to establish it needs to be brought out.

It added that the testimony of an eye-witness could not be discarded on the ground that their names did not figure in the inquest report prepared at the earliest point of time (relied on Khujji @ Surendra Tiwari vs The State Of Madhya Pradesh 1991)

The bench further discarded the argument of the defence that the surviving appellant, Pravesh, had no direct motive to participate in the murder.

The High Court ruled that when a case rests on direct, trustworthy ocular evidence, the question of motive loses its legal significance.

"The law on this issue is already well established that when ocular testimony inspires the confidence of the Court, the prosecution is not required to prove the motive. Mere absence of motive would not impinge on the testimony of a reliable eye witnesses. Motive is an important factor for consideration in a case of circumstantial evidence. But when there are direct eye witnesses, motive is not significance", the bench observed.

The bench, however, found that a strong motive did, in fact, exist in the present case. The bench noted that the murder was the culmination of a civil land dispute that began in 1972 between the informant, Mahipal Singh, and the ancestors of the accused.

Furthermore, the bench addressed the defence's stance that an adverse inference should be drawn against the State for failing to examine another named eyewitness, Rohtash.

The High Court rejected this procedural technicality, as it referred to Section 134 of the Evidence Act to emphasize that the law does not dictate a required plurality of witnesses to prove a criminal charge.

"It is the quality of the evidence and not the quantity, which matters, if the evidence of a solitary witness appeals to the Court to be wholly reliable, the same can form the foundation in recording a conviction. The prosecution is not bound to examine all the cited witnesses, and it can drop witnesses to avoid multiplicity or plurality of witnesses", the Bench further observed.

Thus, the bench concluded that non-examination of the said eyewitness, who was a relative of both the informant and defence, was not fatal at all to the prosecution and no adverse inference could be drawn against the prosecution for his non-examination.

Regarding the evidence of PW-1 (Father of the deceased) and PW-2 (brother-in-law of the deceased), the bench opined that the same cannot be discarded on the ground that they are chance witnesses and are related to the deceased, in light of their trustworthy depositions.

The Court further concluded that the presence of PW-1 and PW-2 at the spot at the time of the incident was proved, and both witnesses saw the incident and consistently narrated it. Therefore, their depositions were reliable.

Therefore, the Division Bench upheld the trial court's judgment and ordered appellant-Pravesh to serve out his remaining life sentence in jail.

The Appeal failed and was dismissed as to the surviving appellant-Pravesh.

Counsel for Appellant(s): Jawahir Yadav, Jitendra Kumar Shishodia, Maneesh Kumar, Pranshu Gupta, V.k. Jaiswal

Counsel for Respondent(s): Gambhir Singh, Govt. Advocate, Pankaj Bharti, Ranvijay Singh