By PTI
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted a man from Punjab, convicted for kidnap and murder of two minor children, and sentenced to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment.
The top court said that when a conviction is based solely on circumstantial evidence, such evidence and the chain of circumstances must be conclusive enough to sustain a conviction.
A bench of Justices UU Lalit and Vineet Saran said that the conviction of a man called Ravinder Singh alias Kaku is based only upon circumstantial evidence and in order to sustain the conviction, it is imperative that the chain of circumstances is complete, cogent, and coherent.
“The circumstances from which an inference as to the guilt of the accused is drawn have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt and have to be shown to be closely connected with the principal fact sought to be inferred from those circumstances,” it said, while setting aside the High Court verdict.
The bench said, “Upon thorough application of the above-settled law on the facts of the present case, we hold that the circumstantial evidence against the present appellant i.e. A2 (Kaku) does not conclusively establish the guilt of Kaku in committing the murder of the deceased children.”
It said that the last seen theory, the arrest of the accused, the recovery of material objects, and the call details produced, do not conclusively complete the chain of evidence and do not establish the fact that A2 committed the murder of the children of PW5 (father of children).
It said, additionally, the argument of the Punjab Police that the call details produced relating to the phone used by A1 (mother of children) and A2 have established that they shared an intimate relationship and that this relationship became the root cause of offence is also “unworthy of acceptance”.
The bench said, “The High Court fell in grave error when it fallaciously drew dubious inferences from the details of the call records of A1 and A2 that were produced before them. The High Court inferred from the call details of A2 and A1 that they shared an abnormally close intimate relation.”
It said that the high court further inferred from this, that unless they had been madly in love with each other, such chatting for hours would not have taken place.
“The above inferences were drawn by the High Court through erroneous extrapolation of the facts, and in our considered opinion, such conjectures could not have been the ground for conviction of A2. Moreover, the High Court itself observed that “there is no direct evidence to establish that A1 and A2 had developed illicit intimacy” and in spite of this observation, the court erroneously inferred that the murder was caused as an outcome of this alleged illicit intimacy between A1 and A2″, it said.
The bench said, “However, we hold that not only is such conviction not possible on the present scattered and incoherent pieces of evidence but that the prosecution has not even established the motive of the crime beyond reasonable doubt.”
It said that in the present case, the fact that A1 and A2 talked on call, only proves that they shared a close relationship.
“However, what these records do not prove, is that the murder was somehow in furtherance of this alleged proximity between A1 and A2. The High Court’s inference in this regard was a mere dubious conclusion that was drawn in absence of any cogent or concrete evidence.
The High Court itself based its inferences on mere probability when it held that “It is quite probable that A2 would have thought that the minor children had been a hurdle for his close proximity with A1,” the bench added.
It added that the prosecution has also failed to establish by evidence the supposed objective of these murders and what was it that was sought to be achieved by such an act.
“The court observed that the act of A2 was inspired by the desire to exclusively possess A1. However, it seems improbable that A2 would murder the minor children of PW5 and A1 to increase or protect his intimacy with A1 rather than eliminate the husband of A1 himself,” it said.
The bench added, We cannot uphold a conviction which is based upon a probability of infatuation of A2, which in turn is based on an alleged intimacy between him and A1, which has admittedly not been established by any direct evidence.
The top court set aside the verdict of the High Court and upheld the acquittal of the mother of children and one Ranjit Kumar Gupta.
The convict had moved the top court against the verdict dated February 22, 2011, of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana in a case in which two children, aged about 10 years and 6 years respectively were kidnapped and murdered.
There were three accused namely; Anita @ Arti (mother of the children) (A1); Ravinder Singh @ Kaku (A2) and Ranjit Kumar Gupta (A3).
The Trial Court convicted all the three accused and sentenced them to death for the offence punishable under Section 302 read with 120B IPC and rigorous imprisonment for 10 years and a fine of Rs.
5000 each for the offence punishable under Section 364 IPC.
Being aggrieved by the trial court verdict, the three convicts moved to the High Court which on February 22, 2011, acquitted Anita @Arti (A1) and Ranjit Kumar Gupta (A3) and partly allowed the appeal filed by Ravinder Singh @ Kaku (A2) and while setting aside the death penalty, sentenced him to undergo rigorous imprisonment for 20 years under Section 302 IPC.
