In a verdict earlier this week, a bench of Justices Suresh Kumar Kait and Manoj Jain noted, “It will not be safe to hold the accused guilty merely on basis of the ‘last seen together theory’, which is also not proved beyond a shadow of doubt.”
Moreover, the accused and deceased used to work together and hence their being together cannot be said to be unusual, the court said.
It noted a person who cla imed to have seen the men with the deceased before his death turned hostile during the trial. HC also took a dim view of police investigation while dealing with an appeal filed by Videshi Kumar and Ram Nath, arrested in 1997.
HC highlights gaps in murder probe
Setting aside the order by which a trial court convicted the two in 2001, HC said probe conducted by police was based largely on circumstantial evidence that the two were last seen with the victim and blood-soaked clothes were recovered from them. The weapon — a knife — was found lying near the victim.
High Court said to add to their misery “police has not prepared any site plan depicting the place where the accused were last seen together with the deceased and the place of recovery of the dead body. This important detail cannot be left for imagination. Be that as it may, the aspect of last seen together does not stand proved conclusively. Moreover, it is a weak kind of evidence which can never be said to be sufficient in itself for holding someone guilty, particularly when motive is also not proved,” the bench noted, after dissecting the evidence marshalled by police.
Case records reveal that while Nath spent over six years in jail before being granted bail due to suspension of sentence, Kumar had to suffer additional incarceration for almost eight years as he couldn’t afford to pay bail bonds till it was substantially reduced. Later, advocate Abhimanyu Sharma appeared for Kumar and an amicus was also appointed by court to enable the men to pursue their appeal diligently since they were unable to engage lawyers.
Interestingly, while dealing with the police story of motive, HC discovered that the police had fastened two other murder cases on the men who were migrant labourers living in slums near Nizamuddin Railway station decades ago while they did odd jobs. The duo were however acquitted.
HC, in its threadbare analysis of prosecution story, highlighted gaps. It questioned police’s motive that since victim Tuntun became aware of Nath’s illicit affair with a married woman, he was killed. The charge was denied by the woman herself and not backed by any corroborating evidence.
“The motive, herein, is unclear and cannot be assumed from disclosure statements of the accused, being inadmissible in evidence. There is no other connecting link or circumstance suggesting their complicity.
There is no recovery at the instance of the accused suggesting their involvement. Since the case was resting upon circumstantial evidence and since according to the prosecution, the accused were ₹last seen together with the deceased’ and thereafter his dead body was recovered next morning from the railway track, the Investigating agency should have prepared a site plan clearly pointing the places where they were seen together and the place from where the dead body was eventually recovered,” HC further pointed out, giving the duo benefit of doubt.
HC also made short work of the claim that bloodsoaked clothes were found from Nath which matched the blood group of the victim. The bench pointed out that Nath’s own blood sample was not taken (to rule out it was not his own blood), nor was the expert who prepared the FSL report examined by the trial court.
Kumar and Nath had claimed being falsely implicated in the matter.
High Court also found it curious that “on one hand, the prosecution has alleged that the accused persons were very clever and guileful and in order to screen themselves from legal punishment, they had thrown the dead body on railway track to portray it to be a case of a train-accident and on the other hand, they were fool enough that after committing the alleged murder, they would leave the weapon of offence at the spot.”
Acquitting the men HC said this “paradox is not digestible.”