The Supreme Court has set aside the conviction of the appellant, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2016 murder case in Jhajjar, Haryana. A Bench of Justice J.K. Maheshwari and Justice Vijay Bishnoi held that the prosecution failed to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, primarily due to unreliable eyewitness testimony and a questionable recovery of the alleged murder weapon.
The appeal challenged the Punjab and Haryana High Court’s decision upholding the 2018 trial court verdict convicting the appellant for murder under Section 302 IPC and for possession of an illegal weapon under Section 25 of the Arms Act. The Court relied on the recovery of a pistol, two live cartridges, and an FSL report linking the weapon to the crime.
The case arose when a woman was shot dead by unidentified assailants in 2016. Her brother initially reported that three unknown men in an Alto car had attacked her. Five days later, in a supplementary statement, he named the accused and two others. During the trial, however, he and his brother Sandeep turned hostile, denying that they witnessed the crime and identified the accused. With the core eyewitness collapsing, the case rested heavily on the recovery of a country-made pistol and live cartridges allegedly seized from the accused.
The Court found major gaps in this recovery. The pistol was recovered from an unlocked iron box inside a room accessible to other family members, with no independent witnesses present. There was no clear link establishing that this pistol was actually used in the murder, and even the chain of custody from seizure to FSL was incomplete. The Court held that a mere FSL correlation, without proving that the recovered weapon was the same as the one used in the crime, was insufficient to sustain conviction.
A substantial part of the Supreme Court’s analysis focused on the admissibility of this recovery under Sections 25, 26 and 27 of the Evidence Act. The Court reiterated that Sections 25 and 26 bar the use of confessions made to police or in police custody, unless made in the immediate presence of a Magistrate. Section 27, which acts as a limited exception, allows only that portion of a disclosure which “distinctly relates” to the fact discovered to be admissible. Emphasising the significance of the term “distinctly,” the bench explained that the information must have a clear, direct, and unmistakable connection to the actual discovery. In this case, the appellant’s disclosure did not clearly indicate that the pistol recovered was the same weapon used in the murder, and therefore could not satisfy the strict requirements of Section 27.
On motive too, the prosecution’s case faltered. The alleged grudge primarily related to co-accused family members who had either been acquitted or never charge-sheeted. The supposed motive attributed to the appellant, a friend of a co-accused, was deemed speculative and unsupported by evidence.
Holding that both the Trial Court and the High Court failed to properly evaluate these deficiencies, the Supreme Court ruled that the appellant’s conviction could not stand.
Appearances
Appellant- Mr. Gagan Gupta, Sr. Adv. Mr. Tanuj Agarwal, Adv. Mr. Apoorva Singhal, AOR Mr. R. Venkataraman, Adv. Mr. Alok Kumar, Adv. Mr. Jasbir Singh, Adv.
Respondent- Mr. Akshay Amritanshu, AOR Ms. Drishti Rawal, Adv. Ms. Drishti Saraf, Adv. Mr. Sarthak Srivastava, Adv. Mr. Mayur Goyal, Adv.
