Child Witness Is An Easy Prey To Tutoring: Allahabad High Court Sets Aside Death Sentence; Acquits Mother, Uncle In Triple Drowning Case
The Court held that it "defies basic logic and human behaviour" that a mother plotting to kill her children would spare the eldest merely to let him testify against her.
Justice Siddhartha Varma, Justice Jai Krishna Upadhyay, Allahabad High Court
The Allahabad High Court has held that a child’s testimony must be approached with "extraordinary circumspection and care" due to susceptibility to tutoring. Applying this caution, the Court set aside the conviction and death sentence of a mother accused of drowning three of her four children, as well as the life sentence of her co-accused, after finding the prosecution’s case relied on the uncorroborated word of her eight-year-old child.
The Court noted that the prosecution narrative was inherently improbable, as it required accepting that a mother intent on eliminating her offspring would spare her eldest son, leaving him alive to testify against her. The Court also noted key contradictions in the child's statement referring it as “hallmark of tutoring” and drew an adverse inference against the State for failing to examine the Gram Pradhan, whose initial report had set the investigation in motion.
A Division Bench of Justice Siddhartha Varma and Justice Jai Krishna Upadhyay observed, “While a child witness may possess the technical competency to depose under Section 118 of the Evidence Act, it is important to be cautious as children are impressionable, imaginative, and highly vulnerable to external suggestions, coaching, and tutoring. A child of tender age can easily be swayed by surviving relatives, police officers, or village elders into believing or reciting a specific narrative. Consequently, the testimony of a child witness must be approached with extraordinary circumspection and care… this Court finds that the sole testimony of the 8 year-old child witness suffers from irreconcilable contradictions and exhibits clear hallmarks of tutoring, rendering it wholly unsafe to form the sole basis of conviction”.
“We must also test the prosecution narrative on the touchstone of natural human conduct and probabilities under Section 114 of the Evidence Act. The prosecution propounds that the appellant-mother executed a cold-blooded killing of her three children aged 4,5 and 6 years, yet spared the 8-year-old child, leaving him unharmed to act as an eyewitness against her. This hypothesis is inherently improbable and unnatural. If an accused mother had indeed succumbed to criminal intent to eliminate her offspring, it defies basic logic and human behaviour that she would spare the eldest child who was fully capable of speaking, observing, and implicating her”, it noted further.
Senior Advocate Saghir Ahmad appeared as amicus curiae while Amit Sinha, AGA appeared for the respondent.
The prosecution case was that on June 27, 2024, Priyanka, in collusion with her brother-in-law Ashish, allegedly took her four sons to a bridge over the Sengur river and attempted to drown them, killing three while the eldest escaped and later informed relatives. An FIR was lodged around 18:44 hours the same day, though panchayatnamas and post-mortems of the deceased children had already been conducted earlier without any case crime number.
The Additional District and Sessions Judge, Auraiya, convicted both accused under Sections 302 read with 120-B of the IPC, awarding Priyanka the death penalty and Ashish life imprisonment, prompting the present Reference and appeals before the High Court.
Examining the child witness's testimony against settled precedent on evaluating minors' evidence, the Court found irreconcilable contradictions with the informant's own version, noting that the child's statement was recorded over a week after the incident, undermining claims of his presence at the scene. It further held that non-examination of the Pradhan, despite being a material witness, warranted an adverse inference under established Supreme Court authority on withholding best evidence.
“Applying these principles to the case at hand, the Pradhan of the village concerned was an important witness in this case as it was on his application the law came into motion in a case where the prosecution relies exclusively on a single 8-year-old child witness whose evidence is riddled with contradictions and tutoring. The examination of the Pradhan was absolutely vital to supply the genesis of the incident and to corroborate how the crime was first disclosed. This omission leaves an unbridgeable gap in the prosecution case. Under these circumstances, the Court is bound to draw an adverse inference against the prosecution. We must infer that had the Pradhan been produced and subjected to cross-examination, his testimony would not have supported the prosecution narrative, or would have exposed the true genesis of the incident, which might have been entirely different from the version put forward by the police”.
The Court allowed both appeals, set aside the trial court's judgment, and directed the honourable acquittal and forthwith release of both accused-appellants, if not wanted in any other case. It also fixed the fee of the Amicus Curiae, Senior Advocate Saghir Ahmad, at Rs. 50,000/-.
Cause Title: Priyanka v. State of U.P. and Another (Neutral Citation: 2026:AHC:198410-DB)
Appearances:
Appellant: Saghir Ahmad, Senior Counsel, appeared as Amicus Curiae, assisted by Gunjan Sharma and Rajarshi Gupta, Advocates.
Respondent: Amit Sinha, AGA.