Due Caution Must Be Exercised By Appellate Court Before Reversing Acquittal Orders By Trial Courts: Bombay High Court

Even if the appellate court is inclined to re-evaluate and re-appreciate evidence on record to take a different approach, such interference is not justified when the trial court's view is a possible view, not marred with perversity or unreasonableness and thus, the appellate Courts must exercise a great deal of caution before disturbing the factual findings recorded by the trial court, Bombay High Court has held. In a criminal writ petition filed by the State of Maharashtra against the acquittal order passed by the ad-hoc Additional Sessions Judge, where respondents were charged with offences under Sections 120B, 302, 364 and 201 read with 34 of IPC, a bench of Justice S.S. Shinde and Justice Milind N. Jadhav said,"the appellate court should generally be loath in disturbing the findings of a trial court especially when the view adopted by the trial court is a possible view." The bench has further stated that the appellate court should only interfere if the trial court's findings are palpably erroneous or result in injustice. BackgroundAn FIR was filed by one Shri Krishna Mane who found the body of the deceased in his field. The body was naked and blood was oozing out of the nostrils and Shri Krishna after informing the sarpanch of the same, registered an FIR. The investigating officer arrested Respondents 1 to 3 after due investigation and postmortem report. The investigating officer recovered the deceased's blood-soaked clothes along with respondent no. 1's blood-soaked clothes from respondent no.1's house. An amount of INR 20,000 was also recovered and all items were sent for chemical analysis. The case was forwarded to Sessions Court by the Judicial Magistrate under Section 209 of CrPC. Charges were framed against respondents who had denied any complicity in the offence. ArgumentsThe Prosecution case before the trial court was that the deceased's daughter was married to respondent no. 2 who used to mistreat her along with his family and the daughter had initiated litigation regarding the same and used to attend hearings with her father. This was the motive behind respondent no. 2's hiring of respondent no.1 through respondent no.3 to kill the deceased. The Prosecution submitted that this was a criminal conspiracy where respondent no. 2 paid INR 20,000 to respondent no.1 for the contract killing of the deceased. Respondent no.1 visited the deceased in his house and then took him along on his motorbike to locate an underground water source in the nearby field of Shri Krishna Mane. As soon as the deceased had located the underground water source and was performing Pooja, respondent no. 1 threw chili powder on his face and smashed his head with a stone and killed him. Upon killing him, as per the Prosecution's case, respondent no.1 undressed the deceased to leave no evidence behind and then left his naked dead body in the field which was found two days later by the owner of the field, Shri Krishna mane. The Prosecution examined all fourteen witnesses in support of his case and no defense witness was produced before the trial court. After hearing arguments from both ends, the trial court acquitted the respondents of all charges and thus, the present appeal has been preferred by the State of Maharashtra against that judgment. Assistant Public Prosecutor, appearing on behalf of Appellant state submitted that the impugned judgment suffered from infirmities because although the Prosecution's case implicated the respondents in all offences beyond any reasonable doubt, the impugned judgment still acquitted the respondents of all charges. Per Contra, Counsel for Respondents, Rui Danawala, submitted that not only the entire case is based on circumstantial evidence, but that chain in itself also has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. FindingsThe High Court first ventured into the question as to whether an appellate court can meddle with the order of the High Court, especially when it's an order of acquittal since it's an established position of law that an order of acquittal by a trial court "only bolsters the presumption of innocence in favour of the accused." Referring to the Apex Court's judgments in Murlidhar @Gidda v. State of Karnataka, Surajpal Singh v. State, Tulsiram Kanu v. State, Madan Mohan Singh v. State of UP, Atley v. State of UP, Aher Raja Khima v. State of Saurashtra, Balbir Singh v. State of Punjab, Khedu Mohton v. State of Bihar and Chandrappa v. State of Karnataka, among others, the High Court perused through some important principles regarding appellate court's interference in trial court's judgments, which have been enumerated as under: There exists a presumption of innocence in favour of the accused and such presumption becomes more substantial through an acquittal order passed by a trial court, in his favourThe accused is entitled to benefit of reasonable doubt, especially in an appeal against...

Due Caution Must Be Exercised By Appellate Court Before Reversing Acquittal Orders By Trial Courts: Bombay High Court

Rashmi Bagri

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