The Calcutta High Court has ruled that failure to recover the weapon used in a murder does not, by itself, make the prosecution case unreliable if the killing is otherwise proved through credible evidence. The division bench upheld the conviction and life sentence of three persons involved in a 1999 murder in Purba Bardhaman district.
A bench of Justice Debangsu Ghosh and Justice Md Shabbar Rashidi, while affirming the verdict of the Additional Sessions Judge, Katwa, observed that the prosecution had “sufficiently been able to prove the charges levelled against the appellants with the help of convincing evidence.”
“As such, we find no justification in interfering with the impugned judgment of conviction and order of sentence. We affirm the same,” the court said in its judgment delivered on Friday.
The case stemmed from the murder of one Sridam Ghosh on June 19, 1999. According to the complaint lodged by his elder brother, Gopinath Ghosh, Sridam was travelling in a mechanised boat on the Ganges with his two brothers when the accused — Dhanu Ghosh and two accomplices — boarded the same boat at Ketugram in Purba Bardhaman.
During the journey, Dhanu allegedly took out a pipe gun and shot Sridam in the throat from close range, killing him instantly. The complaint stated that Dhanu’s aides stood beside him and shouted that Sridam must be killed to avenge an earlier dispute.
The three accused were arrested and, in February 2022, convicted of murder under Section 302 of the IPC and sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court.
Challenging their conviction before the High Court, the appellants argued that the trial court erred in convicting them without recovery of the weapon allegedly used in the crime. Their counsel claimed that the prosecution failed to produce the pipe gun or the fired bullet as evidence, and that the conviction was based on conjecture rather than proof.
The defence also contended that the accused had been falsely implicated due to previous enmity and pending criminal cases between the two sides.
The state counsel countered that there was overwhelming eyewitness evidence directly implicating the accused. He argued that the testimony of three eyewitnesses had withstood cross-examination and clearly established that the appellants were the perpetrators.
The prosecution, he said, had proved the case beyond reasonable doubt, and the absence of the weapon did not detract from the strength of the evidence presented.
The High Court agreed with the prosecution’s position, holding that non-recovery of the offending weapon or the absence of charges under the Arms Act cannot render the prosecution case unreliable or false once the killing itself is established through credible testimony.
“Since it is established from the evidence at the trial that the victim was murdered, non-recovery of the offending weapon and absence of charge under the relevant sections of the Arms Act cannot render the case of the prosecution unreliable or false,” the bench said.
The judges further observed that motive becomes irrelevant when there are eyewitnesses to the crime.
“It is trite law that the motive for committing a crime becomes redundant in the presence of eyewitnesses. In the case at hand, there are at least three eyewitnesses to the incident,” the court noted.
Addressing the defence plea of false implication, the court remarked that such a claim could “act like a two-edged sword,” as it might also indicate a motive behind the killing.
“We are not at all convinced with such a defence put up by the appellants,” the bench added, concluding that the earlier enmity might in fact have been the cause of the murder.
Finding no infirmity in the trial court’s judgment, the High Court dismissed the appeal and affirmed the conviction and life sentence of Dhanu Ghosh and his two co-accused. The bench reiterated that strong eyewitness testimony and corroborative evidence were sufficient to sustain a murder conviction, even without recovery of the weapon used.
