Role Of Investigating Officer Is To Collect Evidence, Not To Create One: Supreme Court Acquits Murder Accused
Upholding acquittal in Himachal pradesh double murder of step-mother and step-brother, the Court noted that the DNA match with accused's blood showed presence at some point, not on date of offence.
Justice Manoj Misra, Justice Vijay Bishnoi, Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has reiterated that an investigating officer's role is limited to collecting evidence and does not extend to creating it. Where the police record a person's statement without disclosing what led them to that witness, the Court held, serious doubt arises that the witness has been set up, and the omission may dent the witness's credibility.
Applying this principle, the Court dismissed the State of Himachal Pradesh's appeal and affirmed the High Court's acquittal of a woman accused of murdering her step-mother and minor step-brother. It discarded the taxi driver and the hotel worker, produced to corroborate the last-seen circumstance, as witnesses set up to create evidence. It accepted the forensic report matching the accused's DNA with dried blood on a trunk in the victim's house, but held that this shows only that she was present there "at some point in time," not on August 31, 2011. The Court noted that she was a regular visitor to the house.
A Bench of Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Vijay Bishnoi observed, “…the role of the investigating officer is to collect evidence and not to create one. Where there is no occasion for the investigating officer to record statement of a person, or for that person to impart information to the police, yet, the police proceeds to record his statement without narrating the circumstance in which it was considered necessary to record his statement, a serious doubt arises as to whether that witness has been set up to create evidence”.
“…where a person is not even aware that the information which he is possessed of is incriminating against some person, there is no likelihood of that person reporting that information to the police. In such circumstances, what propels the investigating officer to record his statement becomes important, and failure to disclose the reason may dent the credibility of that witness as it may reasonably be inferred that the said witness is one who has been set up”, the Bench noted.
Advocate Rohit Lochav appeared for the appellant and Advocate Vidushi Garg appeared for the respondent.
On September 07, 2011, the deceased woman's father reported that she had been missing for six to seven days and that a foul odour was coming from her locked house. Police broke the lock and found the bodies of the woman and her minor son. The autopsy found strangulation, and death was placed five to seven days earlier. The prosecution alleged that the accused, the woman's step-daughter, was last seen at the house on August 31, 2011, and that she acted over property allegedly bequeathed to the boy.
The Sessions Court, Chamba, convicted the accused under Section 302 of the IPC on November 07, 2012. The Himachal Pradesh High Court allowed her appeal, after doubting the key witnesses, thereafter the State then appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Court first restated that an acquittal is interfered with only on perversity or where cogent evidence has been discarded on unsustainable grounds. It then found the father's last-seen account an improvement on his earlier statement, and his six-day silence unexplained. The investigating officer, it noted, never explained why he recorded the taxi driver's and hotel worker's statements. The taxi driver's statement was recorded after the accused's arrest, and the hotel produced no stay record.
The Court held that the prosecution failed to prove the broken lock was the one tested against the recovered keys.
“Presence of blood of the accused in the room at best indicates that at some point in time the accused was present there. This does not indicate that the accused was present on 31.08.2011 or for that matter on any given date. Importantly, the prosecution case itself is that the accused had been visiting the house of the deceased regularly in the past. Probability of some injury in the past causing blood to spill on the cabinet is one possibility which cannot be ruled out. Besides, what is important is that the accused’s blood was not found on the clothes of the deceased or on any cloth or material which might have been used to strangulate the two deceased. In consequence, this circumstance, even if it is accepted as proven, is not conclusive of the accused being the perpetrator of the crime”, the Bench noted further.
The police also did not collect tower locations for the mobile phones or exhibit the deceased's call records, which the Court called a serious lapse. It accepted the DNA match but held that it showed only that the accused was present at some point, since she visited the house regularly. It also found motive unproved and said the medical evidence did not rule out death after September 01, 2011.
Cause Title: The State of Himachal Pradesh v. Anchla @ Chanchla (Neutral Citation: 2026 INSC 1074)
Appearances:
Appellant: Vikrant Narayan Vasudeva- 2329, AOR, Rohit Lochav, Arindam Gupta, Advocates.
Respondent: Sangeeta Kumar- 725, AOR, Vidushi Garg, Advocates.