Testimonies Of Interested Witnesses To Be Met With Stricter Standard Of Proof: Supreme Court Grants Acquittal In Murder Case

The appeals before the Apex Court were preferred by the accused appellants against the judgment of the Madras High Court dismissing the criminal appeals preferred by the appellants and confirming their conviction and sentence in a matter involving Sections 302 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.

The Division Bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta said, “In the instant case, the two key witnesses are the son and wife of the deceased, who are very well-interested witnesses in the case. Therefore, their testimonies shall have to be treated with great caution, required to be met with a stricter standard of proof and deserve to be scrutinized in order to rule out any embellishment.”

Factual Background

The case involved two accused persons. As per the prosecution's story, the de facto complainant-PW-1, son of the deceased, was a resident of South Omanallur village in Tirunelveli district. The deceased used to know one Balasubramnian, father of the first accused. The deceased was reported to the jurisdictional police by the said Balasubramnian. This allegedly gave rise to a feud between the two parties and led the deceased to attack Balasubramanian, who sustained injuries on his left hand due to the said attack. This ongoing enmity had been ascribed to be the motive by the prosecution behind the murder of the deceased by the appellants, being the son and the relative of Balasubramanian. The family members of the deceased deposed that the deceased was a habitual drunkard and had several cases registered against him.

It was alleged that on the date of the incident, the second accused went over to the residence of the deceased and asked him to accompany him to a TASMAC shop to consume alcohol. After reaching, the second accused was said to have administered a threat to the deceased, giving a signal to the first accused and asking him to finish off the deceased. The first accused then started attacking the deceased indiscriminately with a weapon, by way of retaliation for the injuries caused to Balasubramaniam by the deceased in the past. The said occurrence was allegedly witnessed by PW-1 and PW-2.

The two accused persons escaped, and the deceased succumbed to the multiple injuries at the spot itself. The Trial Court imposed the punishment of life imprisonment upon the accused persons, and the High Court confirmed the same. It was in such circumstances that the appeal came to be filed before the Apex Court.

Reasoning

Dealing with the aspect of related witnesses, the Bench observed, “It is of first and foremost importance to note that it is a well-settled principle that when the witnesses are related/interested, their testimonies have to be scrutinized with greater care and circumspection. In the case of Gangadhar Behera v. State of Orissa, this Court held that the testimony of such related witnesses should be analysed with caution for its credibility.”

Coming to the facts of the case, the Bench noted that the appellants had rightly raised the contention regarding the improbability of PW-1 and PW-2 covering a distance of 16 kilometers in a matter of barely thirty minutes on a single bicycle. “It is the prosecution’s own account that the deceased had left the house with A2 at around 12 noon on a motorcycle, and that the incident took place at around 12.30 p.m. This leaves PW-1 and PW-2 with a bare period of thirty minutes to reach the place of occurrence, encounter the deceased over there and subsequently witness the horrific incident. It seems exceedingly improbable and raises huge doubts about the presence of PW-1 and PW-2 at the crime spot. Once their presence at the scene becomes immensely doubtful, it renders the entire prosecution story highly unbelievable and lacks any substantial evidence about the appellants’ involvement in the crime”, it stated.

It was further observed that as per their own testimony, PW-1 and PW-2 while being at the spot and actively witnessing the entire crime, did not make any attempt to save the deceased person while he was allegedly being indiscriminately attacked by the accused persons. As per the Bench, it remained highly questionable as to why, after the incident, the two eye-witnesses travelled back the entire distance of 16 kilometres to their house first and went to the police station only subsequently thereafter, despite there being a police station en-route from the liquor shop to their home. “No satisfactory answer to such glaring loopholes in the prosecution story has been provided by the star witnesses”, it added.

The Court also noted that no other alleged eyewitness had supported the prosecution’s case. Reference was made to the post-mortem report which identified 26 injuries on the body of the deceased, and this according to the Bench was unlikely to be caused by a sole assailant and was more probable to be a result of an attack by a group of individuals. As per the Bench, the deceased was a habitual drunkard and a convicted criminal under the Goondas Act and there was a possibility that the deceased had enmities with multiple people who may have assaulted him and caused his death.

“On the contrary, there remains an impressionable question mark about the presence of the accused persons at the spot of the crime itself”, the Bench said while allowing the appeal and acquitting the appellants of the charges alleged against them.

Cause Title: Esakkimuthu v. State Represented by the Inspector of Police (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 880)

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