Allahabad HC Sets Aside Life Sentences Where Prosecution Ran Two Conflicting Stories and Relied Entirely on Hearsay and Village Rumour
The Allahabad High Court acquitted four men convicted of murder, finding the prosecution could not choose between two inconsistent stories and produced no eyewitness, only hearsay and unverified sniffer-dog evidence.
A Division Bench of the Allahabad High Court comprising Justice J.J. Munir and Justice Vinai Kumar Dwivedi, with the judgment delivered by Justice Vinai Kumar Dwivedi, has set aside life sentences imposed on four men — Bhanwar Singh, Beniram, Om Prakash, and Kaptan Singh — for the murder of Sukhpal alias Munna on the night of 14 October 1998. The Additional Sessions Judge, Court No. 15, Agra, had convicted all four under Section 302/34 of the IPC on 13 January 2020 and sentenced them to imprisonment for life with a fine of Rs. 20,000 each. The High Court found that not one prosecution witness had seen the crime being committed, that the prosecution simultaneously ran two irreconcilable versions of the offence, and that every piece of evidence implicating the appellants was either hearsay or speculation rooted in village rumour. Both Criminal Appeal No. 441 of 2020 and Criminal Appeal No. 392 of 2020 were allowed.
The Killing of Sukhpal alias Munna and the Two Competing Accounts
Sukhpal alias Munna had gone to deliver milk at Munna Khan's dairy at Gaharra Ki Pyau on the evening of 14 October 1998. When he did not return by around 9:00 P.M., his brother Harbhan Singh, along with other family members, went to search for him. They found his dead body in a field belonging to one Laccho, a resident of Beri Chahar, at around 11:00 P.M. The deceased bore multiple gunshot and knife wounds. Dr. A.K. Singh (PW-7), who conducted the postmortem, recorded two firearm entry wounds, multiple incised wounds totalling thirteen in the upper abdomen with the intestines protruding, and other injuries. The cause of death was shock and haemorrhage from ante-mortem injuries.
Harbhan Singh (PW-1) scribed a written report (Exhibit Ka-1) on 15 October 1998, naming Shivraj Singh, Mangal Singh, and Harpal Singh as the perpetrators. He stated that while searching for his brother, his party had seen these three men fleeing the spot in torchlight and heard gunshots. A first information report was registered at Police Station Kagarol, District Agra, on 15 October 1998 under Section 302 IPC, bearing Case Crime No. 178 of 1998. The investigating officer, Sanjeev Katiyar (PW-8), prepared the panchayatnama, site plan, and recovery memos, collected two empty .315 bore cartridges and one bullet near the body, and submitted a charge-sheet against Shivraj Singh and Mangal Singh under Section 302 IPC. Harpal Singh remained at large.
The case took a sharp turn when residents of village Bisalpur submitted an application dated 19 November 1998 to the Superintendent of Police, Agra, contending that the persons named in Exhibit Ka-1 had been falsely implicated due to prior enmity. The villagers raised suspicion about Phool Singh and Badan Singh of Nagla Mohana, alleging the deceased had illicit relations with women of that village and that a sniffer dog had tracked to Phool Singh's house. This application led to the case being handed to the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CBCID).
After re-investigation, the CBCID rejected the earlier charge-sheet against Shivraj Singh and Mangal Singh and filed fresh charge-sheets (Nos. 10, 10A and 10B) against a wholly different set of accused: Bhanwar Singh, Beniram, Om Prakash, and Kaptan Singh, under Sections 302/34 IPC and Section 27 of the Arms Act. The CBCID's theory was that the appellants had murdered the deceased because he allegedly had illicit relations with Chandravati, wife of Hari Singh, and Savitri, daughter of Om Prakash, both residents of Nagla Mohana. The Trial Court framed charges against the appellants on 1 December 2007 on the basis of the CBCID charge-sheets.
The Dual Prosecution and the Acquittal of the Original Accused
In a further complication, applications under Section 319 of the Code of Criminal Procedure were filed during trial seeking to summon Shivraj Singh, Mangal Singh, and Harpal Singh — the persons named in Exhibit Ka-1 — as additional accused. The Trial Court summoned them vide order dated 6 July 2009. They applied for separation of trial, which was granted vide order dated 27 January 2014, creating Sessions Trial No. 1144-A of 2007. On 30 January 2014, that court acquitted all three.
The consequence, as the High Court observed, was a prosecution that had formally pursued two sets of accused for the same murder in the same trial court, relying on contradictory narratives. The Trial Court that ultimately convicted the appellants in January 2020 even adversely commented on the separation of trial in its judgment, a fact the High Court noted from the record.
The Witness Evidence: Hearsay, Contradiction, and Hostile Turns
The prosecution examined witnesses in two tranches. The High Court assessed each witness's testimony in detail and found that no one had seen the appellants commit the murder.
Harbhan Singh (PW-1), the informant and the deceased's brother, testified consistently with his written report against Shivraj Singh, Mangal Singh, and Harpal Singh. His evidence had no relevance to the appellants' case, the Court held, because he was deposing against persons who were not parties to these appeals. His deposition was treated as doubtful and suspicious.
Rajendra Singh (PW-2), who claimed to have seen all four appellants in tractor headlights at about 11:00 P.M. on 14 October 1998, admitted in cross-examination that he had not disclosed this sighting to the informant, the station house officer, or any senior police officer for four months after the incident. He also admitted he had not personally witnessed any illicit relations of the deceased. The Court found he had testified falsely, his account built entirely on village gossip about the alleged illicit relations.
Lal Singh (PW-3) was not an eyewitness. He knew of the murder only from information received the following morning. The application to the Superintendent of Police (Exhibit Ka-2), which he had signed along with other villagers, stated that unknown persons had committed the murder. The Court found his evidence to be hearsay throughout.
Mohan Singh (PW-4) arrived at the scene after the event and testified that the crowd had the collective opinion that the appellants were responsible due to the alleged illicit relations. The Court held that the opinion of a gathered crowd is not evidence.
Ajay Pal Singh (PW-5) received news of the murder from a third person named Virendra. In cross-examination, he admitted he had no idea who committed the killing. Dharam Pal Singh (PW-6) turned hostile and stated that no incident had occurred in his presence. However, during cross-examination by the defence, he identified the original accused Shivraj Singh, Mangal Singh, and Harpal Singh as men who had stopped the deceased on the way and spoken with him, before the deceased was killed.
Ranjeet Singh (PW-9) claimed in examination-in-chief that while going to plough his field at 10:00 P.M. on the night of 14/15 October 1998, he saw the appellants standing near the dead body in the shade of a tree. Yet in cross-examination he admitted he had not told the informant, the station house officer, or any other police officer at the scene about this sighting. He confirmed he disclosed this fact for the first time before the court. He further admitted that his statement to the CBCID was recorded three years after the incident, and that he could give no reason for withholding the information for so long. The Court found his testimony fabricated and wholly unreliable.
Gopal Singh (PW-12) turned hostile and stated he had no knowledge of who committed the murder.
Among the second tranche of prosecution witnesses, Jawahar Singh (PW-1), son of Bhagwan Singh and the deceased's own brother, stated that their elder brother Harbhan Singh had lodged a false report due to party bandi and that Shivraj Singh, Mangal Singh, and Harpal Singh had not committed the murder. His only evidence against the appellants was that sniffer dogs had tracked to their houses. Raj Kunwar Singh (PW-2) admitted in cross-examination that his evidence about the appellants' guilt was based on hearsay. Jawahar Singh (PW-3), son of Lakhan Singh, turned hostile and exonerated the originally named accused, but expressed suspicion against the appellants based only on village rumours about the illicit relations. Dharam Pal Singh (PW-4) and Mahaveer Singh (PW-5) followed the same pattern: hostile to the original case, suspicious of the appellants only because of the sniffer-dog trail and village gossip, without personal knowledge.
The Sniffer-Dog Evidence: No Record, No Handler, No Reliability
Multiple prosecution witnesses testified that a police sniffer dog, after smelling the dead body and the deceased's clothes, had tracked to the houses of the appellants in Nagla Mohana. The High Court examined whether this could sustain a conviction.
It could not. The Court found there was no document, panchnama, or report on record showing the dog's movements from the place where the body was found to any location. The handler of the sniffer dog had not been examined as a prosecution witness. Without a reliable record of the exact manner of tracking in the panchnama, corroborated by the handler's testimony that could be tested in cross-examination, dog-tracking evidence has no evidentiary value.
The Court applied the Supreme Court's ruling in Gade Lakshmi Mangaraju alias Ramesh v. State of A.P., (2001) 6 SCC 205, which catalogued the inherent frailties of sniffer-dog evidence — the possibility of error by the dog or its handler, the risk of misrepresentation, and scientific uncertainty about canine tracking faculties. That judgment held that criminal courts need not bother with such evidence and that judicial exercises cannot afford reliance on canine faculties, even where investigative exercises may employ them.
Two Prosecution Stories, One Confused Record
The High Court found the prosecution's structural failure to be decisive. The prosecution had run two competing accounts: the first, reflected in Exhibit Ka-1, named Shivraj Singh, Mangal Singh, and Harpal Singh; the second, built from the CBCID re-investigation, named the appellants. Both sets of accused were prosecuted in the same sessions trial, some prosecution witnesses supported the first set, some the second, and the Trial Court itself commented on the anomaly of the trial being separated.
“The prosecution itself is not clear and certain as to which prosecution story, and against which set of accused persons, it is adducing evidence.” The Court's assessment was that those prosecution witnesses who implicated the appellants did so solely on the basis of the sniffer-dog trail and rumours about the deceased's alleged illicit relations, neither of which had been independently proved.
The Trial Court had convicted the appellants principally on the evidence of Rajendra Singh (PW-2), Lal Singh (PW-3), Mohan Singh (PW-4), and Ranjeet Singh (PW-9). The High Court found that all four had relied on hearsay. None of the witnesses who implicated the appellants had personally witnessed the alleged illicit relations or the killing. The Trial Court had, in the Division Bench's assessment, misread and misappreciated the evidence and relied on material that was legally inadmissible as proof of guilt.
The Legal Standard: Suspicion Cannot Substitute Proof
The Court applied two Supreme Court decisions on the threshold for conviction. In Sujit Biswas v. State of Assam, (2013) 12 SCC 406, the Supreme Court held that “suspicion, however grave it may be, cannot take the place of proof” and that the gap between what “may be” true and what “must be” true must be bridged by clear, cogent, and unimpeachable evidence. In State of Odisha v. Banabihari Mohapatra and Another, (2021) 15 SCC 268, the Supreme Court reiterated that an accused is presumed innocent unless proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
Applied to the facts, the High Court found that conviction of the appellants on suspicion rooted in the deceased's alleged illicit relations, unproved sniffer-dog tracking, and rumours prevalent in village Bisalpur and surrounding areas, was against settled principles of the law of evidence. The Trial Court's conclusions were described as based on conjectures and surmises, contrary to the evidence on record.
Outcome
The Division Bench set aside the judgment and order of conviction and sentence dated 13 January 2020 passed by the Additional Sessions Judge, Court No. 15, Agra, in Sessions Trial No. 1144 of 2007 (State v. Beni Ram and Others), arising out of Case Crime No. 178 of 1998 under Section 302/34 IPC, Police Station Kagarol, District Agra. Both Criminal Appeal No. 441 of 2020 and Criminal Appeal No. 392 of 2020 were allowed. The Trial Court had also acquitted the appellants of the charge under Section 27 of the Arms Act, and that acquittal was not disturbed.
The appellants — Bhanwar Singh, Beniram, Kaptan Singh, and Om Prakash — were on bail at the time of the judgment. Their bail bonds were cancelled and sureties discharged. A copy of the judgment was directed to be transmitted to the Trial Court along with the lower court records for necessary compliance.