Supreme Court acquits all seven accused in 39-year-old murder case

The Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted all seven accused persons (appellants) in a 39-year-old murder case for want of evidence [Vijay Singh @ Vijay Kr Sharma v. State of Bihar]..While acquitting the accused, the Court took strong objection to the Patna High Court's observations that a widow cannot be expected to have make-up articles. A Bench of Justice Bela M Trivedi and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma expressed displeasure at the High Court for making such sweeping and unwarranted remarks which it termed 'highly objectionable'."A sweeping observation of this nature is not commensurate with the sensitivity and neutrality expected from a court of law," the Court said..The case arose on August 30, 1985 when the seven accused persons along with other fifteen unidentified persons entered the residence of the deceased, one Neelam, and abducted her. Next day, the body of the deceased was found in the paddy field near her residence. The postmortem of deceased suggests that the death was due to severe damage to vital organs.The accused persons were booked for offences under sections 323 (causing hurt), 302 (murder), 364 (kidnapping), 449 (house-trespass), 450, 380 (theft in house) read with sections 34 and 120-B of Indian Penal Code (IPC).In 1992, the trial court convicted five out of seven accused persons (present appellants) under sections 302 and 364 and acquitted two persons. On appeal by the State, the High Court overturned the acquittal of the two accused persons and also affirmed the conviction of five accused persons.Aggrieved, all the seven accused persons approached the apex court..The Supreme Court noted that case of the prosecution was completely based on circumstantial evidences and was full of glaring doubts."...the post mortem report indicates that the death of the deceased was unnatural and the commission of murder can-not be ruled out. But there is no direct evidence on record to prove the commission of murder by the accused per-sons. The link of causation between the accused persons and the alleged offence is conspicuously missing. The circumstantial evidence emanating from the facts sur-rounding the offence of abduction, such as the testimonies of eye witnesses, has failed to meet the test of proof and cannot be termed as proved in the eyes of law," the Court observed.Moreover, the evidence of the eye-witness was also under serious doubt, the Court said.It noted that the non-examination of natural witnesses and other neighbours of deceased who admittedly came out of their houses to witness the offence, coupled with the fact that projected eye witnesses failed to explain their presence at the place of occurrence, rendered the entire version of prosecution unreliable."Conduct of the eye witnesses also appears to be unnatural considering that they were all relatives of the deceased," the Court said..The top court also noted that the High Court's findings regarding the evidence recovered from the residence of the deceased was surmised on the fact that make-up articles were recovered from the house which only had a female widow apart from the deceased. The High Court had concluded that make-up articles would not belong to widow but to deceased. The Supreme Court expressed serious objection to this inference drawn by High Court."The High Court did take note of this fact but explained it away by observing that since Chando Devi was a widow, the make-up articles could not have belonged to her as there was no need for her to put on make-up being a widow. In our opinion, the observation of the High Court is not only legally untenable but also highly objectionable," it said. However, on the aspect of evidentiary value, the Court noted,"Be that as it may, mere presence of certain make-up articles cannot be a conclusive proof of the fact that the deceased was residing in the said house, especially when another woman was admittedly residing there. Furthermore, if Neelam was indeed residing there, her other belongings such as clothes etc. ought to have been found in the house and even if not so, the other residents of the same house could have come forward to depose in support of the said fact."In view of the glaring lapses in the case of prosecution, the Court proceeded to set aside the decisions of the trial court and the High Court and acquitted all the seven accused..Senior Advocate RK Dash and advocates Fauzia Shakil, Amit Sharma, Dipesh Sinha, Pallavi Barua, Aparna Singh and Ajay Kumar Singh appeared for the accused.Advocates Shivam Singh, Kartikay Aggarwal, Manish Kumar and Shantanu Sagar appeared for State of Bihar..[Read Judgment]