Supreme Court acquits man wrongfully convicted for murder nearly 36 years ago [Read Judgment]

A Division Bench of the Supreme Court recently acquitted a person wrongfully accused of murder, nearly 36 years after he was first convicted (Md. Younus Ali Tarafdar vs. The State of West Bengal).

Both the trial court and the Calcutta High Court had concluded that the appellant was guilty of murdering the deceased back in 1984.

The Supreme Court ultimately found that the case against the appellant-accused, based on circumstantial evidence, was weak and did not conclusively prove that his involvement in any crime. The Bench comprising of Justices L Nageswara Rao and Deepak Gupta found,

The Court arrived at the finding on appreciating the facts of the case, based on the principles outlined in Anjan Kumar Sharma vs . State Of Assam for the adjudication of cases founded on circumstantial evidence i.e.

• The circumstances from which the conclusion of guilt is to be drawn should be fully established. The circumstances concerned “must” or “should” and not “may be” established;

• The facts so established should be consistent only with the hypothesis of the 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; and

• There must be a 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.

Applying these principles, the Supreme Court found that the prosecution had not definitively established that the appellant was even last seen together with the deceased.

Since the prosecution had failed to prove the appellant's culpability, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal and accordingly set aside the judgment of the High Court.

[Read the Judgement here]