Case Of Sheer Negligence & Dereliction Of Duty On Part Of Investigating Agency & Public Prosecutor For Not Conducting Test Identification Parade: SC Orders Acquittal In Murder Case

The Apex Court was considering an appeal challenging the judgment of the Karnataka High Court whereby the order confirming the conviction of the accused-appellants was upheld. One out of the three accused persons passed away during the pendency of the matter and his appeal was dismissed as abated.

The 3-Judge Bench comprising Justice Vikram Nath, Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Sandeep Mehta asserted, “The gap between “may be guilty” and “must be guilty” is significant, separating uncertain speculations from definitive conclusions. Thus, it is the duty of the prosecution to elevate its case from the realm of ‘may be true’ to ‘must be true.”

Factual Background

As per the prosecution case, the first accused was the nephew of a liquor merchant. He had developed an immoral and illicit relationship with the merchant’s wife. As a sequel to this illicit relationship, the first accused Manoj hatched a plan to eliminate the merchant and for this purpose, he contacted the other two accused persons.The incident dates back to 2001 when the first accused took the merchant in his car on the pretext of taking him to see an expert doctor at Sholapur, Maharashtra. All the accused persons thereafter committed the murder of the merchant by strangulating him with a nylon rope. Before abandoning the dead body, the clothes worn by the deceased were taken off and his denuded body was thrown in a forest area.

The first accused made a pretence of being a victim of dacoity and lodged a complaint before the Solapur Police. Looking at the suspicious conduct and the flimsy story concocted by the first accused,the police officers started interrogating him. During the course of interrogation, he broke down and confessed to have murdered the merchant. After the dead body was discovered, an F.I.R. was registered against the accused persons for the offences punishable under Sections 302 and 201 IPC read with Section 34 IPC. The Trial Court sentenced them to life and the High Court dismissed their appeal. Aggrieved thereby, the accused-appellants approached the Apex Court.

Reasoning

The Bench took note of the fact that the entire case of the prosecution hinges on circumstantial evidence and explained, “It is a well-established principle of criminal jurisprudence that conviction on a charge of murder may be based purely on circumstantial evidence, provided that such evidence is deemed credible and trustworthy. In cases involving circumstantial evidence, it is crucial to ensure that the facts leading to the conclusion of guilt are fully established and that all the established facts point irrefutably towards the accused person’s guilt. The chain of incriminating circumstances must be conclusive and should exclude any hypothesis other than the guilt of the accused.”

The case as against the first accused was based on three incriminating circumstances i.e., ‘motive’, ‘last seen’ and ‘recoveries’ but the Investigating Officer failed to exhibit the recovery memorandums. There was no indication in the deposition of the Investigating Officer that he sealed the recovery articles or got the same subjected to test identification at the hands of the relatives of the deceased merchant.

Another very crucial missing link in the prosecution case was that it failed to conduct the Test Identification Parade(TIP) of the recovered articles, thereby, bringing the identification of the material objects in Court under a cloud of doubt. “It is a case of sheer negligence and dereliction of duty on the part of the Investigating Agency and the Public Prosecutor for not conducting Test Identification Parade(TIP)”, the Bench held while also adding, “Therefore, this material omission on part of the Investigating Officer(PW-27) in not conducting a Test Identification Parade(TIP) of the recovered articles, more particularly when the case of prosecution is based solely upon recoveries of these articles, has created holes in the fabric of the prosecution story, which are impossible to mend.”

As per the Bench, “Every piece of relevant fact needs to be sewn via the golden thread of duly proved circumstances, in order to ultimately formulate the fabric of guilt. Sadly, in the present case, the facta probantia fails to sustain and support the alleged factum probando, rendering the prosecution’s case miserably weak. Hence, the evidence led by the prosecution against the accused person is woefully short of the mandate to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt.”

The Bench further asserted that neither the disclosure statements of the accused persons were proved as per law, nor the prosecution was able to establish the factum of recoveries of allegedly looted articles purported to have been made on the behest of the accused persons by leading proper evidence. No other evidence was led by the prosecution to bring home the guilt of the accused persons.

Allowing the appeal and acquitting the accused-appellants, the Bench concluded, “...the chain of circumstantial evidences in the present case cannot be held to be so complete, so as to lead to the only hypothesis of the guilt of the accused which is totally inconsistent with their innocence.”

Cause Title: Thammaraya and Another v. The State of Karnataka (Neutral Citation:2025 INSC 108)

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