Cannot accept confession made to stranger: Bombay High Court acquits murder accused

The Bombay High Court last week acquitted a person of murder charges on the ground that extra-judicial confession made by the accused to a stranger cannot be the basis of conviction [Mansoorali Khan Ahmed Khan & Anr. vs State of Maharashtra]..A Bench of Justices Sadhana Jadhav and Prithviraj Chavan observed that an extra-judicial confession would in normal course be made only to a person in whom the confessor reposes faith and not a passer-by with whom one was recently acquainted.“Accused had given graphic details of the act committed by him including the role of each of the accused persons and the manner in which they had killed both the deceased. It is rather very difficult to accept that the accused would make an extra judicial confession to a stranger,” the High Court noted.The Bench thus acquitted the petitioners of charges of murder, causing disappearance of evidence and common criminal intention. The accused were arrested and charged in 2006 for murdering one Dilshad Khan (who was their cousin) and one Suresh Murav, who used to work in the store that Dilshad was managing while his uncle, the owner, was away.There was supposedly a history of animosity between Dilshad and the accused, since one of the accused was purportedly in love with Dilshad's sister, but the family forbade him from marrying her.Murav was at the shop on the ground floor when the accused reportedly had a disagreement with Dilshad and murdered both Dilshad and Murav on the shop's mezzanine floor.The trial court convicted the accused in 2010. .With the case centred on circumstantial evidence, the prosecution highlighted an extra-judicial confession by the accused to one of the witnesses as a key piece of evidence.The defence stated that accused Mansoorali had "only a stray acquaintance" with the witness and therefore, the confession would not inspire confidence.The Court accepted this contention, noting that it was a well-known fact that the accused worked as a waiter in a hotel which the witness used to visit once a week. The Bench noted that the accused had no reason to repose faith in a customer of the hotel..The High Court relied the Supreme Court's observations in the cases of Balwinder Singh vs State of Punjab and State of Rajasthan vs Rajaram, where on the subject of extra-judicial confessions, it had ruled that implicit reliance on the same could not be placed for upholding the convictions.“It is also clear that there is no independent corroboration to the alleged extra judicial confession. The manner in which it is said to have been made appears to be improbable and imprudent,” the Bench added..The Court also said that motive could not be proved in the present case because Dilshad's brother became hostile throughout the trial.An eyewitness who claimed that he had seen the three defendants in the shop was disbelieved and other circumstantial evidence proved insufficient, the Bench observed.As a result, the High Court stated that while an accused might be convicted based on an extrajudicial confession, the confession must inspire trust, which it did not in this case..Advocates MM Khokhawala, Megha Puralkar, Devyani Kulkarni appeared for the appellants. Assistant Public Prosecutor GP Mulekar appeared for the State..[Read Judgment]