Three shots described, two cartridges recovered: Allahabad HC ends a government appeal filed in 2001

A Division Bench affirms the acquittal in a 1999 railway compartment murder, finding the only two eyewitnesses were relatives whose account the physical evidence did not support.

A man was shot dead in a crowded railway compartment in Unnao on 12 May 1999. The trial court acquitted the four accused on 16 September 2000. The State filed a government appeal in 2001. On 18 September 2026 — twenty-seven years after the killing and twenty-five after the acquittal — the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court dismissed it. In State of U.P. v. Shiv Lal and 3 Ors., Justice Pramod Kumar Srivastava and Justice Abdul Moin held that the two eyewitnesses were not of sterling quality, that their evidence was neither cogent nor clinching, and that the trial court had taken a possible view which an appellate court cannot displace.

The prosecution case

The informant, Natthi Lal, boarded a train at Kulha Railway Halt on 12 May 1999 with his brother-in-law Ram Lal and Ram Lal’s wife Smt Chhedana, travelling towards Unnao. When the train stopped at Bund-Hamirpur Halt, four men are said to have boarded the compartment: Shiv Lal, who had an old enmity with Ram Lal, his son Rajesh, and his brothers-in-law Devi Prasad and Desh Raj alias Deena. Armed with country-made pistols, they are alleged to have fired on Ram Lal, killing him.

A written report was lodged at G.R.P. Unnao and a first information report registered under Section 302 IPC. The first investigating officer recorded the informant’s statement, inspected the scene, prepared the inquest, and recovered two empty 0.315 bore cartridges and blood from the compartment floor, along with a site plan. The case was later transferred to Police Station Achalganj on a question of jurisdiction and re-registered as Crime No. 141 of 1999, with a second investigating officer completing the charge sheet.

The trial proceeded before the Special Judge, SC/ST Act, Unnao in Sessions Trial No. 268 of 1999. Nine witnesses were examined: the informant, the deceased’s wife, two constables, the two investigating officers, a head constable, the autopsy surgeon and the train guard. In their statements under Section 313 CrPC the accused denied the allegations, pleading that the case arose from rivalry, village factionalism and ongoing litigation between the families, and that the charge sheet rested on improper investigation. No defence evidence was led. The trial court acquitted all four.

What each side argued

For the State, the AGA submitted that the trial court had considered the evidence in a cursory and arbitrary manner, that sufficient evidence had been adduced, that the witnesses were intact and had not resiled, and that their testimony had been misread. On the absence of railway tickets — a point the trial court had weighed — he submitted that the booking window had not been open when the party reached the platform, so travelling without tickets was not impossible and their presence could not be doubted on that ground alone. The findings, he argued, were perverse and no view other than conviction was possible.

He relied on Shivaji Sahabrao Bobade v. State of Maharashtra, both for the proposition that proof of guilt must fall in the category of “must be” and not “maybe”, and for the caution that the evidence of rural witnesses is not to be judged by the same standard of exactitude and consistency as that of urban witnesses, and that non-production of an eyewitness is not by itself fatal since production is a matter of prosecutorial discretion.

For the respondents it was submitted that the prosecution had produced only two witnesses of fact, both relatives of the deceased, whose testimony was neither clinching nor convincing, and who were not eyewitnesses at all but were presented as such after the incident. Reliance was placed on Tulasareddi v. State of Karnataka, where the Supreme Court held that interference with an acquittal must rest on compelling reasons such as patent perversity or misreading of evidence, and not merely on the availability of another view.

The guard who was never told

The most telling evidence came from the one witness with no stake in the quarrel. The train guard, a railwayman of eleven years, deposed that the incident occurred in the fourth compartment from the engine while his own was the eighth. He described the train’s running that day — it had started around 5.30 am, reached Bund-Hamirpur late at 10.59 am, left at 11.00 am and arrived at Unnao at 12.24 pm — and said he had gone inside the compartment where the body lay. The investigating officer never recorded his statement.

What he said mattered less than what he did not. He had heard passengers crying out that someone had been killed. He did not say that either the informant or the deceased’s wife had contacted him or told him about the incident, and when he reached the body neither spoke to him about what had happened. On his evidence, the Bench held, it did not emerge that the two claimed eyewitnesses were present beside the body identifying the deceased. Nor had the passengers said that two or four persons had killed the man — only that someone had.

Conduct that did not fit the account

Where the judgment is most detailed is on what the two witnesses said they did, and the Bench’s reading of it is closely argued rather than impressionistic.

On their own evidence the compartment was full, which is why the deceased sat on an upper berth near the middle door while the two witnesses and two minor children sat on a lower berth. When the accused entered and opened fire, both said they hid themselves under the lower berth and watched from there. Neither said a word about what became of the children, or what they did to protect them.

Nor did either raise an alarm. The deceased’s wife deposed that the accused rushed in with firearms in hand and that she did not cry out; that the first shot was fired by Shiv Lal with his hand extended and the second by Devi Prasad from the corridor; and that no other passenger was injured. She did not say she had called the driver or the guard, and she did not plead that fear had prevented her from seeking help. The Bench found her conduct surprising: a woman who watched her husband shot before her and neither cried out nor sought help from anyone in a crowded compartment.

After the accused fled, the witnesses sought no assistance and told neither the driver nor the guard. When both railwaymen came to the compartment on hearing the commotion, neither witness made any complaint about an assault by the accused. According to the FIR they had by then changed compartments and hidden themselves — which the Bench found difficult to believe of a woman whose husband had just been killed and whose assailants had already left the train.

The Bench also found it improbable that men who suddenly entered a compartment and shot one passenger let the two others hide under a berth undisturbed, without assaulting either. And on the physical evidence, none of the signs of firearm projection was found anywhere in the compartment.

Arithmetic the recovery could not match

On the account of the informant and the deceased’s wife, Shiv Lal fired once at the chest and once at the eye, and Devi Prasad fired at the eye — three shots. The recovery memo records two empty 0.315 bore cartridges near the body. The judgment sets the two figures beside each other and leaves the discrepancy to speak.

Two further gaps ran the same way. The second investigating officer deposed that he had recorded the statements of two independent persons, Prabhu Suryabhan and Dhanau, during the investigation. Neither was produced at trial, and no explanation was offered. And while enmity between the families was established — the deceased had lodged an FIR in July 1998 against these accused over the theft of a tractor, a fact the accused themselves admitted under Section 313 — the Bench held that enmity is not by itself a parameter on which guilt can be decided. The investigating officer made no effort to recover the weapon, and no forensic science laboratory report was obtained.

The circumstances the Bench drew together included the absence of railway tickets for any of the travelling party, and an unexplained feature of the journey itself: on the informant’s own evidence the deceased’s son was under treatment at Lucknow, which left unanswered why he was being taken to Unnao for treatment. The compartment was described by both witnesses as full and too crowded, with the deceased sitting on an upper berth while the others sat elsewhere.

The standard on an appeal against acquittal

Considering the facts, evidence and circumstances in their totality, the Bench found that the presence of the two witnesses at the scene had become doubtful, and that it transpired they were not eyewitnesses but had presented themselves as having witnessed the incident after noticing the injuries.

Applying the rulings cited, the Bench held on close scrutiny that neither witness was of sterling quality, that their evidence was not cogent, convincing and clinching, and that reliance could not be placed on their testimony. The trial court had considered every contention raised before it and had given elaborate findings. It had taken a possible view on an appreciation of the entire record, and that view cannot be substituted by the appellate court merely because a different one is available. Finding no manifest error or perversity in the judgment of acquittal, the Bench held that it did not warrant interference.

Order

The government appeal was dismissed and the acquittal of all four respondents affirmed. The record of the trial court was directed to be sent back, with the section to comply immediately.