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The Trial Court hadn’t given any separate sentence to the convict under Sections 376(3), 377, 506 of the IPC and Section 4 of the POCSO Act in view of Section 42 of the POCSO Act.
In this 14-year-old cold-blooded case, the deceased was hacked to death in front of his own son. During the trial, 71 out of 87 witnesses turned hostile including the relevant ones, thereby leading to the collapse of the prosecution case before Trial Court.
“The conviction can be based on the testimony of a single eyewitness and there is no rule of law or evidence which says to the contrary, provided that the said witness passes the test of reliability.
Allahabad High Court said that the deposition of the informant, recorded during his examination-in-chief and cross-examination prior to the amendment of charges, could not be discarded merely because of his subsequent statements made during the later examination-in-chief conducted after the inclusion of Sections 504 and 506 IPC.
“Youngsters are prone to commit mistakes/follies during their teens or young age for which they cannot be branded as deviant and wholly unreliable.”
“The requirement of law in criminal trials is not to prove the case beyond all doubt but beyond reasonable doubt and such doubt cannot be imaginary, fanciful, trivial or merely a possible doubt but a fair doubt based on reason and common sense.”
The Court explained that when the plea of juvenility was raised, it should have been dealt with under the existing laws at the relevant point of time, especially when there exists a tacit and clear admission as to the age of the Appellant.
The absence of any explanation or defense from the convict, coupled with the surrounding circumstances that pointed to his culpability, led the Supreme Court to conclude that the only plausible inference was that the convict had participated in the commission of the crime.
The Trial Court did not notice the facts that the offence was committed in 2014 and at that time there was no such punishment as rigorous imprisonment for the remainder of natural life in Section 6 of POCSO Act.
The Division Bench opined that in Section 498-A IPC cases, the courts have to be careful to identify instances of over implication and to avert the suffering of ignominy and inexpiable consequences.
The High Court refused to interfere with the sentence imposed on convicts, even after noting inherent contradictions in the statements of the prosecution witnesses and placed major credence on the inconsistent statements of injure and her husband, to establish the liability.
Brij Bihari Prasad, a member of the Bihar Legislative Assembly was murdered in 1998. The High Court reversed the Trial Court’s decision and acquitted the accused persons.
The Court emphasised that in order to reverse a finding of acquittal, a higher threshold is required. The presumption of innocence operating in favour of an accused throughout the trial gets concretized with a finding of acquittal by the Trial Court.
The prosecution case has crumbled like a house of cards. Neither the circumstances have been proved which can lead to a conclusion that the accused was complicit in offence, nor any consistent prosecution version has come which can be relied upon.
This report covers the Supreme Court’s Never Reported Judgment, on murder and dacoity, dating back to the year 1953.
The victim’s family alleged that was in police custody for nine days but after being released on bail, he had died of renal failure.
The minor child, grandson of the deceased provided clear and cogent evidence being the sole eye-witness, stating that his father had strangulated the neck of the deceased for which the deceased struggled for life and then she became calm.
The Court stated that admittedly, the death is homicidal, and the doctor also found that the cause of death is injury, which was inflicted upon the deceased persons. Therefore, the ocular evidence corroborates with the medical evidence.
The Court emphasised that in our conservative society, even on account of family enmity, the future and career of a girl is not jeopardised, and such is a strong circumstance in favour of the prosecution.
Soumya Viswanathan was a journalist working with India Today when she was found dead in her car in Vasant Kunj in 2008