Allahabad High Court Acquits Convict In 1981 Murder Case By According Benefit Of Doubt

The Allahabad High Court last week acquitted one Ram Krishna, who was convicted for the offence of murder (incident dates back to August 1981) by a Sessions Court in March 1983 and sentenced to life imprisonment by giving him the benefit of the doubt. A bench of Justice Siddhartha Varma and Justice Vinod Diwakar found that PW1's testimony, based on which the accused was convicted by the trial court, was neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable. Thus, it concluded that a conviction based on his testimony would be unsafe. In its 11-page order, relying upon the Supreme Court's ruling in the case of Harchand Singh & Anr vs State Of Haryana 1973, the division bench importantly observed that if in a case the prosecution leads two acts of evidence, each one of which contradictions and strikes at the other and shows it to be unreliable, the result would necessarily be that the court would be left with no reliable and trustworthy evidence upon which the conviction of the accused might be based and in such cases, the Court added, the accused would have the benefit of such a situation. The case in brief As per the prosecution's case, a written complaint was lodged on August 11, 1981, by Siddha (PW1), the father of the deceased Bahadur, at the Police Station alleging that the accused, Ram Krishun Singh, called Bahadur to the gate of his house and shot him dead with a double-barrel gun. In the complaint, it was stated that the Accused's motive to kill the deceased was an ongoing land dispute between the accused and Bhagwan Singh, with whom the deceased was working. The trial court convicted the accused under Section 302 IPC and Section 25 of the Arms Act based on the postmortem report, the testimony of PW-1, and other eyewitnesses Ram Asrey (PW-2) and Kumari Chaman (PW-3), who all supported the prosecution's case. Challenging his conviction, the accused moved the HC, wherein his counsel argued that the ocular testimony of PW-1 (complainant Siddha) and PW-3 (eyewitness) does not corroborate with the medical and scientific evidence, and it even contained material contradictions and improvements. It was further contended that PW-1's testimony was inconsistent with his previous police statement given under Section 161 CrPC, and he failed to explain why certain crucial facts were omitted. It was further argued that the alleged motive was unsubstantiated and absurd, and the prosecution failed to produce key witnesses such as Murlidhar, Ram Ratan, and Bhagwan Singh, who were mentioned in the FIR and charge sheet. It was also submitted that the scientific evidence did not corroborate with the medical evidence, and the ballistic report does not support the commission of offence in the way the prosecution has presented it. Lastly, it was argued that the prosecution's case contained contradictions and embellishments, making it unsafe to rely on the testimony of PW-1 and PW-3. Thus, it was prayed that the accused be acquitted.High Court's observations Against the backdrop of these submissions, the Court noted that while the conviction was based on the testimony of PW-1 & PW-3 as the trial court had categorically recorded the finding that there was no question to disbelieve the testimony of PW-1 Siddha, who is father of the deceased and was present at the time of incident. The High Court, however, noted that while PW-1 stated in his statement that the incident was witnessed/seen by Murlidhar, Ram Ratan, Ram Asrey, Chaman, and Rafiq, he failed to justify, except for Ram Asrey (PW-2), why the police witnesses Rafiq Ahmad, Rameshwar, Mohan, Babu Khan, Chaman Lal, Murlidhar, Ram Ratan, Ram Swaroop, Kamta Prasad, and Bhagwan Singh were not produced by the prosecution. The Court also added that the non-production of witness Bhagwan Singh cast serious doubt on the prosecution story, more so when a suggestion was given to the PW-1 that his son's name was arrayed as an accused in the murder of Phool Singh and Sheo Nath Singh, he showed ignorance, which also cast doubt on the truthfulness of the witness deposition.The Court also opined that the failure of the Investigating Officer in sending the blood-soaked soil and pellets recovered from the deceased would not have been fatal for prosecution if the same had fully been established from the testimony of the sole eyewitness (PW-1), in whose presence the fire was allegedly shot at on the deceased, and because of the firearm injury, the deceased died. However, this was not the case. Further, the Court also found faults with Witness PW-2 denying his knowledge about the murder of Bhagwan Singh's father in which Siddha (PW-1), Babu Singh, and Prithvi Singh were arrayed as accused. In view of this, concluding that the PW-1's testimony is neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable and conviction based on testimony of PW-1 would be unsafe, the Court allowed the appeal and the conviction and sentence ...

Allahabad High Court Acquits Convict In 1981 Murder Case By According Benefit Of Doubt

Sparsh Upadhyay

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