Kerala High Court acquits seven including two death row convicts in murder of gangster Jet Santhosh

The Kerala High Court on Tuesday set aside the conviction of seven persons who were convicted by a trial court for the 2004 murder of their former gang member, Jet Santhosh [State of Kerala v. Anilkumar @ Jacky & Anr.]..The trial court had sentenced two of the seven to death and the rest to life imprisonment. A Division Bench of Justices AK Jayasankaran Nambiar and Syam Kumar VM on Tuesday set aside their conviction and consequently, their sentence. The Bench found that there was no material before the trial court that justified the conviction any of the accused for murder. "The above discussion on the appreciation of evidence by the trial court leaves us with no manner of doubt as regards the absence of any material before the court below on which it could arrive at a finding of conviction against any of the accused on any of the charges leveled against them, much less to sentence two among them to capital punishment and the rest to various terms of punishment including, life imprisonment," the Bench stated in the judgment. .The judgment was passed on criminal appeals moved by the seven accused and the death sentence reference moved by the State to confirm the death sentence imposed on two of the accused, Anilkumar and Ajithkumar, by the trial court. The prosecution case was that the appellants, along with other accused kidnapped, tortured and brutally murdered Santhosh for allegedly having an affair with the wife of one of them. The fourth accused in the case, Nazarudeen, had turned approver for the prosecution during the trial. The appellants' primary argument before the High Court was that Nazarudeen's evidence, which was the main basis of the prosecution case, was riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions. They alleged that Nazarudeen, who was initially an accused, had been tortured by the police and coerced to turn approver. They further submitted that all other eye witnesses of the prosecution turned hostile, the forensic reports were unreliable, and that this was a clear case of shoddy investigation. .After going through the material before the trial court and its judgement, the High Court concluded that the reasons given to condone the inconsistencies in Nazarudeen's deposition were unsustainable and uncorroborated by any independent evidence.The Court also said that many aspects that led to the grant of pardon to the approver troubled its conscience. The Court noted that the trial court had granted him pardon merely on the apprehension that other prosecution witnesses may turn hostile.The same was done only 18 months after the commencement of the investigation and his statements before he turned approver were not placed before the court along with the final report. Finding that the trial court's judgment was wholly unsustainable, the Court allowed the appeals and acquitted the accused."We have therefore no hesitation in concluding that the only substantive evidence that is relied upon by the prosecution in the instant case is the testimony of PW1 Nazarudeen and the same lacks credibility making it not worthy of acceptance. Since the evidence of the approver does not satisfy the reliability test itself, the aspect of corroboration does not arise in the instant case. We are therefore of the view that the conviction and sentence imposed on the appellants-accused by the impugned judgment of the trial court cannot be legally sustained," the judgment stated. .The appellant-accused were represented by Senior Advocates B Raman Pillai and P Vijayabhanu and advocates CP Udayabhanu, Renjith Marar, S Rajeev, G Sudheer and A Chandra Babu.Special Public Prosecutor SU Nazar appeared for the State..[Read Judgment]