Benefit Of Defective Investigation Enures To Accused Where Substantive Evidence Is Infirm: Supreme Court Upholds Acquittal Of 20 Accused In Murder Case

The Apex Court was considering a criminal appeal preferred by the informant, and another appeal preferred by the State of Maharashtra against the common judgment of the Bombay High Court reversing the judgment of conviction and order of sentence passed by the Trial Court whereby twenty of the accused had been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for life. The High Court had allowed all six appeals and acquitted them of the offences charged.

The Division Bench of Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice Augustine George Masih held, “To these must be added the concededly serious lapses inthe handling of the case property, which the Chemical Analyser declined to receive because the lac seals were broken and which was thereafter resealed without any record, upon which both the courts below were agreed in excluding the reports of the Chemical Analyser. It is not necessary for us to decide finally upon whether the FIR was ante-timed, nor did the High Court rest its conclusion upon that finding alone. A defect in investigation does not by itself entitle an accused to an acquittal where the substantive evidence is found to be reliable, but where the substantive evidence is itself infirm, the lapses assume significance and their benefit enures to the accused.”

Senior Advocate Huzefa A. Ahmadi represented the Appellant while Senior Advocate Sanjay Kharde represented the Respondent.

Factual Background

The case dates back to the year 2014 revolving around the day of holi. It was alleged that the deceased Avinash had gone to Somnath Nagar to seek the blessings of his grandmother, where the accused Janardhan (A-1) and Milind (A-22) were playing a DJ and Avinash asked the DJ to be stopped as his grandmother was unwell, which culminated in a quarrel. According to the prosecution witnesses, reference was made to the Zilla Parishad election of the year 2013 and a threat to kill was held out. It was alleged that on the same day, when the deceased, along with his father Devidas (PW10), his brother Mukesh (PW-2) and his cousin Ganesh (PW-13), returned to Naik Nagar, the accused persons caught hold of them and dragged them outside the house of the first accoused A-1 where they were assaulted with iron pipes, an iron bar and wooden planks.

Avinash died at the spot, and others, i.e. PW-2, PW-10 and PW-13 sustained injuries, principally upon the head. The informant Nirmalabai (PW-19), who deposed to having witnessed the occurrence from the porch of her house, named 21 persons in her report and attributed to each of them the weapon carried, the victim held and the part of the body assaulted. The First Information Report (FIR) came to be registered upon the oral report of Nirmala Bai Devidas Chavhan, the Appellant in the first set of appeals and the mother of the deceased Avinash, for offences punishable under Sections 302, 307, 147, 148 and 149 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC), read with Section 135 of the Bombay Police Act, 1951.

Reasoning

Considering the number of accused persons involved, the Bench stated that in a normal course, where a single occurrence involving a large number of persons is witnessed by several persons who are differently placed, and some of them themselves are under assault, it is expected and natural that the accounts which they give will ordinarily bear the marks of individual perception. “Differences of detail in such a narration are the natural product of the circumstances in which the observation was made, and their presence lends assurance rather than detracting from it”, it added.

The Bench noted that 4 witnesses had deposed in the same fashion. The High Court found that the witnesses had spoken in almost identical fashion without moving an inch away from each other, and the absence of any role in the carrying of a weapon attributed to those who were said to have held the victims appeared to have been done thoughtfully to create a show of truthfulness.

The Bench also noticed that the genesis of the entire episode was a quarrel over the playing of a DJ between two persons, some hours earlier and around 2.5 kms away from the place of the assault. The prosecution arrayed 23 persons from four related families, most of whom were not residents of Naik Nagar and had no connection with that quarrel and assigned to each of them a specific role. The Bench further found that to nine of the twenty persons convicted, no weapon at all was attributed, the case against them being confined to the holding of a victim or the shouting of exhortation.

“It is to be noted here that a group and factional rivalries carry with them a tendency to rope in the innocent along with the guilty, this Court has on several occasions administered caution while deciding such matters”, it stated.

The Bench also took note of the fact that there were infirmities in the FIR and in the investigation. The carbon copy of the FIR sent to the Magistrate did not tally with the original, the columns as to the time of registration and the station diary entry being blank in the one and written in ink in the other.

Considering the conflict between the ocular and the medical evidence and the unsafe character of the identification of a large assembly, the Bench found the conclusion reached by the High Court to be well justified on the basis of the record. Holding that the threshold for interference with the order of the High Court was not crossed, the Bench dismissed the criminal appeals.

Cause Title: Nirmala Bai Devidas Chavhan v. State of Maharashtra (Neutral Citation: 2026 INSC 787)

Appearance

Appellant: Senior Advocate Huzefa A. Ahmadi, Advocates Ashish Wad, Manoj Wad, T. V. S. Raghavendra Sreyas, Uday Deshmukh, Swati Arya, Deepanshu Verma, M/s J S Wad And Co, AOR Aaditya Aniruddha Pande

Respondent: Senior Advocate Sanjay Kharde, Advocates Siddharth Dharmadhikari, AOR Aaditya Aniruddha Pande, Advcoates Shrirang B. Varma, Gagan Sanghi, AOR Rameshwar Prasad Goyal, Advocate Farah Hashmi

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