An eleven-year-old sent out with ₹15 for cow dung cakes, a red bicycle left at the orchard, and a conviction that survives three hostile witnesses

Justices Rajasekhar Mantha and Anuj Singh dismissed the appeal, held the acquitted co-accused's case was distinct, and ordered the State to pay the parents ₹4,00,000 within seven days.

The judgment withholds the victim's name and her family's. She was about eleven. She lived in a village in Murshidabad district in an arrangement that is common enough: she spent her days with her parents and her nights at her grandmother's house. On the evening of 1 February 2009 she had her evening snack and set out for her grandmother's, carrying ₹15 her mother had given her to hand over for the purchase of cow dung cakes used as fuel in mud stoves. She never got there.

What makes the case painful beyond the crime is what happened next. Nobody looked for her. Her parents assumed she was at her grandmother's house as usual. Her grandmother assumed she had wanted to stay with her parents that night. It was only the following morning, when passers-by noticed her, that she was found hanging from the wooden ceiling of a tin shed in a mango orchard, half clad, her private parts fully smeared with blood. A red Hero ladies' bicycle was lying nearby.

The Additional Sessions Judge, Lalbagh, Murshidabad, convicted the appellant on 20 May 2015 and sentenced him on 30 May 2015 to ten years' rigorous imprisonment and a fine of ₹5,000 for rape under Section 376, and rigorous imprisonment for life with a like fine for murder under Section 302, the sentences to run concurrently with set-off under Section 428. On 14 October 2026 the High Court dismissed his appeal.

Three of the witnesses turned

The investigation began as an unnatural death case; the first investigating officer conducted the inquest, and a police station case was registered on 2 February 2009 under Sections 376(f) and (g), 302 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code on the written complaint of the victim's father. Three successive investigating officers handled the case; the slippers of the victim and the red bicycle were seized from the place of occurrence, and the last of them filed the charge sheet. Charges were framed against the appellant and one co-accused under Sections 376, 302 and 363 each read with Section 34. A third man named in the FIR was never charge-sheeted.

The grandmother deposed to the sleeping arrangement, to the victim leaving her parents' house around 6 p.m. on 1 February, to assuming she had stayed back, and to learning the next morning that the body had been found in the orchard with the lower part of her clothing torn, bruises on her body and her mouth full of dust, with a ladies' bicycle and a pair of Hawai slippers next to her. She identified the body. She also deposed that the appellant had confessed in the house of the co-accused's father that he had eliminated the victim, and that one of the witnesses had told her he too had seen the appellant take the victim away on his bicycle. Her evidence could not be shaken in cross-examination.

The father put the victim's age at ten years and three months, and deposed to having seen her talking to the appellant and the two other men near an alley beside his house around 6 to 6.15 p.m. He and his wife and nephew found her the next morning, dead, hanging from the ceiling of the tin shed, her private parts bleeding.

Three prosecution witnesses did not hold. One, who had reportedly told the family that the appellant had taken the victim away on a red ladies' bicycle, denied seeing anything and was declared hostile; he had been living in Delhi and Noida for four years and came to the neighbouring village on vacation, but he confirmed he was present in the village on the fateful evening and the next day when the body was found. A second was declared hostile and flatly denied the prosecution case. A third, a mason, denied knowing anything and denied his own statement recorded under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, saying he had made it under pressure from the police; he too was declared hostile.

What the grandmother added

Two further pieces of her evidence go beyond the last-seen account. She deposed that the appellant confessed, in the house of the acquitted co-accused's father, that he had eliminated the victim. And she deposed that another witness had told her he too had seen the appellant take the victim away on his bicycle — that being the witness who later denied his own Section 164 statement in court and said he had made it under police pressure.

The condition in which she described the body is also part of the record the Bench worked from: the lower part of the clothing torn, bruises on the body, the mouth full of dust, and the ladies' bicycle and a pair of Hawai slippers next to her. She identified the body. The judgment notes that her evidence could not be shaken in cross-examination, and it is her account, together with the parents', that survives the three hostile witnesses.

The eight circumstances

The Bench set out the circumstances against the appellant as a list. The victim habitually went to her grandmother's house every evening. On the fateful evening she left for her grandmother's home after having her evening snacks. Two witnesses — her parents — saw her talking to the appellant after she left her home. Two further witnesses saw the appellant with the victim on a red-coloured ladies' bicycle, and relayed that information to four others. The bicycle was recovered from the place of occurrence. The bicycle belonged to the appellant. Medical evidence revealed undigested food in the victim's body, indicating she died shortly after leaving her house. And there was the Section 164 statement of the witness who later resiled.

The undigested food is the circumstance that ties the rest together: it places the death within a short window of the time at which her parents saw her speaking to the appellant.

Why parity did not help

The appellant's main legal argument was parity. The trial court had convicted him while acquitting the co-accused, and the evidence against both, he said, was identical; on the principle of parity he was entitled to an acquittal too.

The Court separated the two cases on the evidence. The victim's parents saw her speaking with the appellant, with the acquitted co-accused, and with the FIR-named man who was never charge-sheeted. Thereafter the trend of events took a turn: two other witnesses saw the appellant and the victim together on a red ladies' bicycle, the police recovered that bicycle from the place of occurrence, and the appellant was its owner. The evidence against the co-accused therefore establishes only that he was part of the group speaking with the victim initially; no witness saw him with her on the bicycle. His case is consequently distinct from the appellant's.

The Court added the answer that applies even where the cases are not distinguishable: in any event, an accused cannot take benefit of a wrong acquittal of his co-accused, citing Khujji v. State of M.P., Javed Shaukat Ali Qureshi v. State of Gujarat and R. Muthukumar v. TANGEDCO.

Compensation, with a deadline

The conviction and sentence were upheld and the appeal dismissed, with the connected application disposed of in the same terms. The part of the order that does practical work concerns the victim's family.

The State was directed to pay a total sum of ₹4,00,000 to the victim; in her absence, to her dependents, namely her parents, who have suffered as a result of the crime, in terms of Section 357A of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The State is at liberty to recover that amount from the appellant in accordance with law. If any compensation has already been paid by the State, the balance of the ₹4 lakh is to be paid. The trial court and the State were further directed to ensure that the fine imposed by the trial court is recovered from the appellant, and that if realised it too is remitted in favour of the victim and, in her absence, to her parents.

To stop the direction becoming an entry on a file, the Court fixed a timetable and named the officer to drive it: the Public Prosecutor, Calcutta High Court, was directed to communicate the order to the State at once and request disbursement of the ₹4,00,000 within seven days of communication. A copy of the judgment and the trial court records were directed to be sent to the trial court at once.

Two things about that direction are worth noting. It is made in favour of parents who lost a child in 2009 and have been in court for seventeen years, and it does not wait on recovery from the convict: the State pays first and recovers afterwards, which is how Section 357A is meant to work. And the fine imposed at trial, if realised, is routed to the same place rather than to the exchequer.

Mr Soumyajit Das Mahapatra led for the appellant with a team of seven advocates; Mr Soumapriya Chowdhury and Mr Arka Mukherjee appeared for the State. The hearing concluded on 13 October 2026 and the judgment was pronounced the next day.

The Bench also recorded the setting in which the crime was committed, observing that offences of this kind are carried out in secrecy and away from public view — which is why a prosecution built on last-seen evidence, a recovered article and medical findings about the time of death is often the only prosecution available.