Calcutta High Court Acquits Man Sentenced To Death For Wife's Murder, Says Trial Court “Misconstrued” Facts To Fill Gaps
The Calcutta High Court has acquitted a man who had been sentenced to death for allegedly murdering his wife and concealing her body in a septic tank, holding that the prosecution utterly failed to establish an unbroken chain of circumstances and that the trial court had proceeded with a “pre-determined mind” by attempting to make the facts fit the prosecution's story.
A Division Bench of Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj and Justice Reetobroto Kumar Mitra, sitting at the Jalpaiguri circuit bench, observed that in a case resting solely on circumstantial evidence, a conviction cannot be based on moral suspicion or conjecture. The Court reiterated that every circumstance must be conclusively proved and must point only to the guilt of the accused.
“The learned Judge proceeded with a pre-determined mind and sought to 'cross the t's' and 'dot the i's' to ensure that the facts were made to fill up the gaps, and has thus construed, or rather misconstrued, the facts in his own way to create a chain of circumstances, which is factually unsubstantiated,” the Bench said.
The accused, Gopal Das, had been convicted by the Additional Sessions Judge, 3rd Court, Jalpaiguri, under Sections 498A, 302 and 201 of the Indian Penal Code and sentenced to death in December 2024. The matter came before the High Court in a death reference under Section 366 CrPC.
According to the prosecution, the deceased Lata Das had been subjected to cruelty by her husband and later went missing. Her clothes were allegedly recovered from a nearby well, and her body was subsequently found inside a septic tank near her parental home. The prosecution relied on alleged confessional statements and surrounding circumstances to implicate the accused.
However, after reappreciating the evidence, the High Court found major contradictions in witness testimonies, inconsistencies in the prosecution timeline, and no legally admissible evidence linking the accused to the recovery of the body. The Court noted that even the alleged confession before police could not be relied upon in the absence of any discovery statement under Section 27 of the Evidence Act.
The Bench also found that prosecution witnesses gave conflicting versions regarding when the deceased went missing, how her clothes were discovered, whether the accused confessed before village elders or only after police intervention, and where the couple had actually been residing before the incident.
Significantly, the Court noted that sweepers engaged to retrieve the body had testified that police had already informed them a body was inside the septic tank, thereby weakening the prosecution's claim that the discovery was based on information supplied by the accused.
Reiterating the principles in Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra, the Bench held that the “five golden principles” governing circumstantial evidence had not been satisfied.
“It is not a matter of dispute that a crime has been committed… At the same time, it has to be kept in mind that an innocent person should not be punished,” the Court observed.
Holding that the charges under Sections 498A, 302 and 201 IPC were not proved beyond a reasonable doubt, the Court discharged the death reference, set aside the conviction and sentence, and directed the accused's immediate release.
Case Title: The State of West Bengal v. Gopal Das
Case No.: Death Reference No. 06 of 2024