Kerala High Court acquits woman accused of killing her estranged husband [Read Judgment]

The Kerala High Court recently acquitted a woman accused of killing her estranged husband in cahoots with his aide [Muhammed Yousef v State of Kerala].Justices A Muhamed Mustaque and Kauser Edappagath passed the judgement on the case built solely on circumstantial evidence against the accused. The High Court took the opportunity to stress on the importance of being circumspect when evaluating such evidence as in order to sustain conviction, the evidence must not only be consistent with the guilt of the accused but also inconsistent with their innocence."The care and caution with which circumstantial evidence has to be evaluated has been recognised by judicial precedents. It has been consistently held by the Apex Court that where the case rests squarely on circumstantial evidence, the inference of guilt can be justified only when all the incriminating facts and circumstances are found to be incompatible with the innocence of the accused or the guilt of any other person. In other words, there must be a chain of evidence so far complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for a conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and it must be such as to show that within all human probability, the act must have been done by the accused," the Court said..In the instant case, the High Court found that the evidence did not justify the hypothesis of guilt of the accused but on the contrary, the evidence justified the hypothesis of innocence of the accused..The High Court passed the judgement on an appeal filed by a woman who was accused of hacking her husband to death after he married another woman. She was allegedly helped by her husband's aide as well.They approached the Court challenging the judgment of a trial court that had found them guilty for the offences punishable under Sections 302 (murder), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) read with Section 34 (acts by several in furtherance of common intetion) of the Indian Penal Code, convicted and sentenced them, inter alia, to undergo imprisonment for life.Advocate Renjith B Marar, appearing for the appellants, assailed the findings of the trial court on appreciation of circumstantial evidence and the resultant finding as to the guilt. He submitted that the circumstances highlighted by the prosecution do not present a complete chain of circumstances to warrant the conclusion of guilt on the accused.This was countered by Additional Director General of Prosecution Gracious Kuriakose..The High Court referred to the five principles laid down by the Supreme Court in Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v State of Maharashtra:The circumstances from which the conclusion of guilt is to be drawn should be fully established;The facts so established should be consistent only with the hypothesis of guilt of the accused, that is to say, they should not be explainable on any other hypothesis except that the accused is guilty;The circumstances should be of a conclusive nature and tendency;They should exclude every possible hypothesis except the one to be proved; andThere must be chain of evidence so complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and must show that in all human probability the act must have been done by the accused..The High Court thus concluded that the prosecution failed to prove any acceptable chain of circumstantial evidence that points compellingly and conclusively to the guilt of the accused. "All the circumstances relied on by the prosecution have not been established by the prosecution by clear and cogent evidence," the Court said.It overturned the decision of the trial court and acquitted the appellants..[Read Judgment]