Classic Example Of Shabby & Perfunctory Investigation: Supreme Court Acquits Man Who Was Sentenced To Death In Minor’s Rape & Murder Case
The Supreme Court emphasised that in a case based on circumstantial evidence, the evidence of Investigating Officer/s is of utmost importance.
Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Sanjay Karol, Justice Sandeep Mehta, Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has acquitted a man who was awarded death sentence in a case involving alleged rape and murder of a minor girl aged 3 years and 9 months only.
The said accused filed Criminal Appeals before the Court, challenging the Judgment of the Bombay High Court, which upheld the conviction and death penalty imposed on him.
The three-Judge Bench comprising Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Sanjay Karol, and Justice Sandeep Mehta held, “… we are compelled to hold that flawed and tainted investigation has eventually led to the failure of the prosecution case involving the gruesome rape and murder of a child at the tender age of 3 years and 9 months only. Despite there being hardly any reliable evidence on the record of the case, the accused appellant was convicted and sentenced by the Courts below and has suffered incarceration for almost 12 years of which 6 years were under the Damocles sword of death penalty.”
The Bench emphasised that in a case based on circumstantial evidence, the evidence of Investigating Officer/s is of utmost importance.
Senior Advocate Raghenth Basant appeared for the Appellant/Accused while Advocate (Standing Counsel) Rukhmini Bobe appeared for the Respondent/State.
Factual Background
The Complainant, a painter by profession, used to reside at Thane along with his mother and daughter i.e., the deceased child victim. As per the prosecution case, in September 2013, in the morning, the Complainant’s mother had gone out of the house to fetch water and thereafter, he left his house to attend to some work. The child victim was alone in the house and she came out of the house to play with the family pet dog. When the Complainant returned home after 15 minutes, he noticed that his daughter and the pet dog were nowhere to be seen. When his mother came back to the house, he inquired about the whereabouts of the child from her, but she too was unaware of the same. Concerned about the child’s well-being, he and his mother commenced a frantic search for his daughter.
The Complainant inquired from two persons living in the neighbourhood, who told him that they had seen the child playing with the dog. Thereafter, he went to the watchmen chawl located near his room, where several watchmen used to reside. The pet dog was found in the chawl, but his child was nowhere to be seen. He got suspicious that some unknown person/s might have kidnapped his child and hence, he lodged a Complaint in the Police Station. The Investigating Officer rounded up some 15 to 20 watchmen from the chawl and collected their forensic/blood samples. The dead body of the child victim was recovered after two days of the incident, lying in a muddy water pond at a distance of about one kilometer from the watchmen chawl. The post mortem report revealed numerous injuries on the external and internal genitalia as well as the anus of the child victim.
Few contusions were also found over the skull. Subsequently, the Appellant-accused was arrested. According to the prosecution, the accused confessed before the Investigating Officer that he had committed the crime with the child victim in the chawl’s room. The DNA profiling tests, conducted using the blood of the accused and the DNA samples collected from the child’s body, did not lead to any conclusive opinion. The prosecution case was entirely based on last seen together circumstance, extra-judicial confession, and FSL report. The Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) convicted the accused for the offences punishable under Sections 302, 363, 376(2)(i), and 201 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC) and Sections 4 and 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2013 (POCSO Act). The High Court confirmed his conviction and death sentence and being aggrieved, he was before the Apex Court.
Court’s Observations
The Supreme Court after hearing the contentions of the counsel, observed, “The instant case is yet another classic example of shabby and perfunctory investigation leading to failure of the prosecution case involving a gruesome incident of rape and murder of the budding life of a tender young girl1 aged about 3 years and 9 months.”
The Court remarked that despite the shabby investigation, the overzealous approach of the Courts below, to impart justice, in a sense that someone must be held responsible for the crime, has led to the conviction of the Appellant who was a young man aged about 25 years at the time of the incident and has remained incarcerated for more than 12 years with the Damocles sword of impending death penalty hanging over his head for more than 6 years.
“Admittedly, the case of the prosecution is based entirely on circumstantial evidence. The position of law in a case based entirely on circumstantial evidence, is well-settled by a catena of decisions of this Court, wherein this Court has categorically held that the prosecution has to prove the entire chain of incriminating circumstances by adducing unimpeachable evidence, which leads to only one hypothesis that is consistent with the guilt of the accused, inconsistent with his innocence or the guilt of anyone else”, it further noted.
The Court emphasised that the chain of circumstances sought to be relied upon by the prosecution must be complete in all aspects and must unerringly link the accused with the crime and in case of any breach in the chain of incriminating circumstances, the Court would be left with no option but to acquit the accused by giving him the benefit of doubt.
“We are of the prima facie opinion that the case of the prosecution, particularly on the aspect of time, manner and place of the incident is doubtful. … we have no hesitation in holding that the prosecution miserably failed to prove the circumstance of last seen together by leading credible evidence”, it added.
The Court also said that the statement of the witness on the aspect of extra-judicial confession is full of improvements and contradictions and hence, it is totally unreliable.
“If at all, the accused appellant had made an extra-judicial confession before the witness on 1st October, 2013, his immediate reaction would have been to rush to the police and divulge this fact to the Investigating Officer (PW-16). However, he made no such effort whatsoever”, it noted.
Furthermore, the Court observed that the witnesses of the last seen circumstance were created to add padding to the prosecution case and as a matter of fact, none of them had seen the accused and the deceased (child victim) together.
“… upon an overall appreciation of the evidence of the two Investigating Officers and the witnesses of the last seen theory and so also the sole witness of extra-judicial confession, we are convinced that the entire sequence of events narrated by these witnesses is unreliable and unbelievable. It is clearly a case of concocted depositions secured by the prosecuting agency by way of padding so as to fasten the guilt of this heinous crime, on the accused appellant and thereby lay a claim to have solved the case”, it remarked.
The Court was of the view that the very foundation for arresting the Appellant in this case is lacking. It added that the FSL report and the DNA Analysis Report did not result in any positive finding regarding the presence of human blood or semen on the clothing and other articles seized at the instance of the accused.
“The DNA analysis report remained inconclusive does not implicate the accused appellant. Neither the trial Court nor the High Court placed reliance on these reports for recording a finding against the accused appellant”, it also said.
Moreover, the Court noted that the expert who prepared the report was not examined by the prosecution and findings in this report are vague and inconclusive.
“If at all, the prosecution desired to prove without any exception that the soil found on the shoes of the accused appellant was unexceptionally from the location from where the dead body of the child victim was recovered, then the Investigating Officer (PW-18) should have collected soil samples from the other places frequented by the accused appellant. Then only the possibility of the soil not being from any other place visited by the accused appellant could have been excluded”, it further observed.
The Court said that in any event, even if it is held that the soil/mud found on the shoes of the accused tallied with the soil found in the pond, that would be just an indication of the fact that the accused may have visited the area surrounding the pond at some point of time and this, by itself, would not incriminate the accused in any manner.
Conclusion
The Court, therefore, concluded the following points –
(i) The evidence of the witnesses of last seen circumstance is vacillating, shaky and tainted with wholesale improvements, and hence, unworthy of credence.
(ii) The conduct of the witnesses of the last seen circumstance in failing to timely step forward to make a disclosure to the Investigating Officer that they had seen the accused and the deceased child victim together on the date of the incident in spite of the fact that the police officers were regularly visiting Unnati Woods area, right from late hours of September 30, 2013 onwards, clearly indicates that these witnesses are untrustworthy and were created by the investigation agency for ulterior motive.
(iii) There was a clear reference to the witnesses of last seen circumstance and in spite thereof, the Investigating Officer made no effort whatsoever to record the statements of these witnesses at the earliest available opportunity.
(iv) The evidence of extra-judicial confession is also unacceptable because the said witness too did not step forward to inform the police regarding the fact of the so-called extra judicial confession made by the accused before him, in spite of being aware that the police was searching for the child.
(v) The FSL report regarding the similarity of soil samples is also inconsequential.
(vi) The reports pertaining to the comparison of the samples taken from the other watchmen never saw the light of the day because prosecution chose not to place the same on record. Hence, it is clearly a case where the prosecution has withheld important evidence thereby, compelling the Court to draw adverse inference against the prosecution.
Accordingly, the Apex Court allowed the Appeals, quashed the impugned Judgment, and acquitted the accused.
Cause Title- Ramkirat Munilal Goud v. State of Maharashtra Etc. (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 702)
Appearance:
Appellant: Senior Advocate Raghenth Basant, AOR Fauzia Shakil, Advocates Aathma Sudhir Kumar, Shreya Rastogi, Pratiksha Basarkar, Kaushitaki Sharma, and Hima Bhardwaj.
Respondent: AOR Aaditya Aniruddha Pande, Advocates Rukhmini Bobde, Siddharth Dharmadhikari, Soumya Priyadarshinee, Vinayak Aren, Amlaan Kumar, Jatin Dhamija, and Naveen Kumar Bhardwaj.
