The Supreme Court observed that where the accused persons are unknown and are not named in the FIR, the Court must proceed cautiously with other evidence.

The Court observed thus in two Criminal Appeals preferred by the accused persons against the Judgment of the Delhi High Court by which the Trial Court’s Judgment was upheld.

The two-Judge Bench comprising Justice P.S. Narasimha and Justice Manoj Misra held, “Normally, where accused persons are unknown and are not named in the FIR, if the prosecution case as regards the manner in which they were arrested is disbelieved, the Court should proceed cautiously with other evidence and objectively determine whether all other circumstances were proved beyond reasonable doubt.”

The Bench said that the weapons/articles allegedly recovered are not so unique that they cannot be arranged.

AOR Praveen Chaturvedi represented the Appellants/Accused while AOR Chirag M. Shroff represented the Respondent/State.

Facts of the Case

The Appellants-accused persons along with others were tried for the offences under Sections 392, 397, and 411 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 25 of the Arms Act, 1959. As per the prosecution case, the Complainant was travelling along with four other passengers, driver, and conductor in a mini bus at night and during that time, four persons including the Appellants boarded the vehicle. Those four persons allegedly threatened the passengers with knives, screw driver, and country-made pistol, robbed them of their mobile(s) and cash and deboarded the vehicle. The driver thereafter took the passengers/victims to nearby police and then an FIR was registered.

The Appellant-Wahid was convicted by the Trial Court under Section 392 read with Section 397 IPC, but acquitted under Section 411 IPC. He was sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment of seven years along with a fine of Rs. 5000/-. Whereas the Appellant-Anshu was convicted and sentenced under Section 392 read with Section 397 IPC to seven years of rigorous imprisonment along with a fine of Rs. 5,000/-; besides that, he was also convicted for the offence punishable under Section 25(1) of the Arms Act and sentenced to three years rigorous imprisonment. Hence, the Appellants had separately preferred Appeals before the High Court against their conviction and as the same were dismissed, they approached the Apex Court.

Reasoning

The Supreme Court in the above regard, noted, “Unfortunately, the High Court and the trial court were not circumspect while evaluating the prosecution evidence and thereby failed to test the prosecution evidence on the anvil of probability as was required in the facts of the case.”

The Court added that the arrest of the accused persons in the manner alleged by the prosecution is highly doubtful and unworthy of acceptance.

“Once we doubt the manner in which the accused were stated to have been arrested, the alleged recovery of screw driver, knives and country made pistol made at the time of arrest is rendered unacceptable”, it remarked.

Furthermore, the Court said that when three eye witnesses stated that accused persons were not the ones who committed the crime and another one stated that it was too dark, therefore, he could not recognise, bearing in mind that the accused persons were not known to the eye witnesses from before, not much reliance can be placed on the dock identification.

“In such circumstances, and in absence of corroborative evidence of recovery of looted articles at the instance of or from the accused persons, in our view, this was a fit case where the appellants should have been given the benefit of doubt”, it also said.

Accordingly, the Apex Court allowed the Appeals, set aside the impugned Judgment, and acquitted the accused persons.

Cause Title- Wahid v. State Govt. of NCT of Delhi (Neutral Citation: 2025 INSC 145)

Appearance:

Appellant: AORs Praveen Chaturvedi, Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi, Advocates Ibad Mushtaq, Akanksha Rai, and Gurneet Kaur.

Respondent: AOR Chirag M. Shroff

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