Delhi High Court: A Division Bench of Siddharth Mridul and Anu Malhotra, JJ. dismissed an appeal filed against the Judgment of the trial court whereby the appellant was convicted for murder under Section 302 read with Sections 120-B and 34 IPC.
Sunil Dalal, Devashish Bhadauria and Jaskaran Singh, Advocates representing the appellant, inter alia, raised a challenge to the credibility of the prosecution witnesses who turned hostile. It was contended that the appellant was falsely implicated in the case.Per contra, Radhika Kolluru, Additional Public Prosecutor representing the State, supported the impugned judgment.
The High Court relied on Govindaraju v. State, (2012) 4 SCC 722, for the proposition that evidence of hostile witness ought to stand effected altogether, and that the same can be accepted on careful scrutiny, to the extent found dependable, and duly corroborated by other reliable evidence available on record. Relying further on Mrinal Das v. State of Tripura, (2011) 9 SCC 479, the High Court observed: “The legal position that obtains is that, the evidence of a hostile witness remains admissible, and is available for a Court to rely on the dependable part thereof, as found acceptable and duly corroborated by other reliable evidence, available on record. Whether the testimony of a hostile witness subject to scrutiny may be relied for nullified would depend on the circumstances of each case. It could be used for corroboration or he corroborated and relied upon or nullified for the availability of better evidence.”
In light of above principle, the Court perused the evidence of the hostile witnesses and held that their testimonies could have relied on the instant case to the extent to which they were dependable and corroborated by the evidence.
Similarly, appellant’s contentions regarding lack of proof of motive and discrepancy in evidence were also rejected, and it was held that no interference was warranted in the impugned judgment. Accordingly, the conviction and sentence awarded by the trial court was upheld and the appeal was dismissed.[Ashok v. State (NCT of Delhi), 2019 SCC OnLine Del 10192, decided on 20-09-2019]
