Supreme Court Overturns Murder Conviction Due to Flawed Eyewitness Accounts and Inadmissible Section 27 Evidence

in allowing the appeals filed by the appellants, Rajendra Singh, his son, and son-in-law, the Supreme Court of India set aside their convictions under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, thereby restoring the original judgment of the Trial Court acquitting the appellant and reversing the High Court’s judgment which had sentenced the three appellants to life imprisonment.

The case is stemmed from a fatal assault on deceased (Pushpendra Singh) in June, 2000, following an earlier altercation between the deceased’s father (Diler Singh) and the appellants over digging a field.

The primary issue before the apex court was to analyze whether the identity of the appellants as the assailants had been reliably established by the prosecution.

Observation: Firstly, the Apex Court found a fatal contradiction in the eyewitness accounts, as such the independent witness, Amarjeet Kaur (PW-7), categorically testified that the deceased’s father, Diler Singh (PW-1), arrived at the scene approximately half an hour after the assailants had already fled, which is contridictory to the testimony of PW-1 (as an eye witness) who claimed to have seen the assault and lodged the FIR. Furthermore, PW-1’s account was rendered suspect because he claimed his clothes were blood-stained from hugging his dying son but admitted he washed those clothes instead of offering them for seizure by the police, which the Court deemed "unnatural" and suggestive of a concocted story.

Secondly, the Apex Court frowned upon the police's failure to conduct a Test Identification Parade (TIP) for PW-7, knowing well that PW-7 is the only independent person who saw the attack, but did not know the names of the assailants. Additionaly, PW-7 was not asked to identify the appellants in court, leaving the identity of the perpetrators doubtful.

The court also noted the manner in which the testimonies of PW-1 and PW-2 (Jwala Singh) were treated; considering their appearance as chance witnesses whose presence at the precise moment of the assault was highly questionable.

Thirdly, regarding the recovery of the swords and the kanta; the Supreme Court refered to analysis of the Privy Council in case of Pulukuri Kottaya and Ors. vs. The King Emperor 1946 (Click to Download) examined the three provision of The Evidence Act, so as to find whether "The weapons recovered were actually the weapons of crime" the Supreme Court strictly interpreted Sections 25, 26, and 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872., and also relying on the judgment in case of Manjunath and Ors vs State of Karnataka (Click to Download)**, the Court reaffirmed a settled legal position that, while the physical discovery of a weapon based on an accused’s statement is admissible, the accompanying confession that "they committed the offence with the above weapons" is inadmissible.

Emphasizing that only the information distinctly related to the discovery of a fact may be proved the Apex Court held that the recovery evidence was weakened by the failure of the prosecution to produce a forensic report matching the blood on the weapons to the deceased’s blood.

Finally, the Supreme Court noted that the High Court had erred by interfering with the Trial Court’s order of acquittal without first concluding that the Trial Court’s findings were perverse or erroneous. It concluded that the cumulative flaws in the evidence mandated granting the benefit of doubt to the accused.

Thus, the Apex Court held that the conviction could not stand, highlighting fundamental defects in both the ocular evidence and the process of recovering the weapons.

Coram: Justice Pankaj Mithal & Justice Prasanna B. Varale.