"They had a suicide pact": Delhi High Court grants bail to man accused of murdering female partner

The Delhi High Court recently granted bail to a murder accused who had entered into a suicide pact with the victim-woman after his family forcibly got him married to another woman in 2016 [Naveen Uppar @ Sunny v. State of NCT of Delhi]. .Justice Vikas Mahajan found merit in the submission made by the counsel representing the accused that after the suicide pact, the woman was able to kill herself while the man was saved as his country-made pistol did not fire.“While considering the petitioner’s application for bail, the possibility of the petitioner and the deceased being involved in a consensual romantic relationship and the deceased partaking in a suicide pact with petitioner and shooting herself, cannot be discounted,” the Court said..The Court also noted that the forensic report clearly stated that although the country made pistol was found to be in normal working order, the cartridge recovered from the accused did not fire despite many attempts.It also took into account the transcript of an audio recording that revealed that the accused and the victim had expressed their love for each other. The victim was also said to have stated she cannot live without him, the Court noted.“This contradicts the prosecution’s version that when the deceased refused to leave the petitioner, he killed her,” the bench said..According to the case details, the police on May 10 in 2016 received information from the accused that he was going to die by suicide and that the woman who was with him had shot herself. The police later found the accused on the driver’s seat in a car and the victim dead in the passenger's seat.The investigation revealed that the victim and accused were in a relationship for several years. The victim-woman was married and had children; the accused was also married to another woman. The prosecution alleged he killed her after she refused to leave him.After hearing the submissions and looking into the evidence, the Court accepted the contention that the accused and victim were in a cordial relationship and that their families were known to each other. The Court, however, rejected the prosecution’s theory that the victim and her husband had advanced some money to the accused which he was not returning. The Court relied on a conversation wherein the accused and his mother were said to have agreed to return the money.In conclusion, the Court said the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses and other evidence clearly tilted the balance in favour of granting bail to the accused..The Court also noted out of 64 witnesses, only 24 witnesses had been examined in the last seven years during trial. The Court, therefore, observed that no useful purpose will be served by keeping the accused behind bars.“It would indeed be a travesty of justice to keep the petitioner in jail for an indefinite period for an offence which may ultimately be found not to have been committed by him, especially when there is material on record which has the prospect of probabilizing the defence of the petitioner,” the Court said, while allowing the bail plea.Senior Advocate Mohit Mathur and Advocate Pawash Piyush represented the accused. Additional Public Prosecutor Richa Dhawan represented the State..[Read Order]