The Supreme Court on Tuesday acquitted a man who had been serving a life sentence for allegedly murdering his mother in 2010, observing that the prosecution’s case was shrouded in “mystery” and based entirely on weak circumstantial evidence.
A bench of Justices K.V. Viswanathan and K. Vinod Chandran set aside a July 2013 judgment of the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court, which had upheld his conviction. The trial court had earlier sentenced him and another accused to life imprisonment. While the High Court had acquitted the co-accused, it had confirmed the appellant’s conviction.
According to the prosecution, the last rites of the deceased woman were conducted in haste. It alleged that the body was removed from the pyre after strangulation marks were noticed on the neck and an injury was found on the back of the skull. The entire case rested on circumstantial evidence.
The Supreme Court bench noted, “There is a mystery surrounding the genesis and origin of the prosecution case.” It referred to the testimonies of four prosecution witnesses, including police officers, who reached the site of the alleged first cremation attempt on the morning of July 22, 2010.
The judges pointed out that despite several people being present at the spot, no efforts were made to identify or examine anyone from the crowd. “A lingering doubt still remains in our mind as to why further leads from that time, place and alleged event were not picked up and why no further investigation as to who organised the cremation was carried out,” the bench observed.
The court expressed concern over the investigative lapses, noting that “the failure to investigate the crowd which had assembled and disbursed at the first alleged attempt at cremating the deceased baffles one’s comprehension.”
Medical evidence in the case was also inconclusive. The bench said there was no definite medical opinion, and the medical expert’s testimony left considerable ambiguity. “Death by suicide cannot be said to be completely ruled out,” the judges noted.
During the hearing, counsel for the appellant argued that the deceased was suffering from schizophrenia, relying on a hospital certificate dated September 26, 1989, issued by a Latur hospital.
The prosecution had claimed that the accused killed his mother for property. The court found this claim unsubstantiated. “Having come out with a case of motive, the prosecution has miserably failed to establish the same. It has come on record that the appellant has his father as well as two sisters who are alive,” the bench said.
“It is not as if that the property would, on the death of the deceased, immediately devolve on the appellant in the event of the alleged murder by him going undetected,” the court added, rejecting the prosecution’s motive theory.
Finding serious flaws in the reasoning of the lower courts, the Supreme Court concluded that the appellant’s conviction could not be sustained. “The courts below had fallen into a serious error in convicting the appellant on the basis of the evidence on record,” the bench said.
Allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court acquitted the appellant of all charges.
