“Last Heard” Is Not “Last Seen Together”: Chhattisgarh HC Acquits Man Convicted of Murder Under SC/ST Act

The Chhattisgarh High Court set aside a life-sentence conviction, holding that a telephonic conversation relayed by the deceased’s wife cannot substitute direct evidence of the accused being last seen with the victim.

A Division Bench of the High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur, led by Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Kumar Agrawal, on 6 July 2026 allowed the criminal appeal of Naresh Kumar Sahu and set aside his conviction and double life sentence imposed by the Special Judge, SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, Raipur. The Special Court had convicted him under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 3(2)(v) of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 in Special Criminal Case No. 10 of 2021. The High Court found that the trial court had conflated two legally distinct concepts—“last heard” and “last seen together”—and that no witness had actually seen the deceased alive in the company of the appellant before his death. With that foundational circumstance absent, the chain of circumstantial evidence could not be closed, and the appellant was extended the benefit of doubt.

The Prosecution Case and Trial Court Conviction

The deceased, Kamal Dhruv, was an agricultural labourer who worked in the fields of Naresh Kumar Sahu and two others in village Dhodra, Police Station Abhanpur, District Raipur. On the night of 18–19 April 2020, a hospital memo from the Government Hospital, Abhanpur, informed the police that Kamal Dhruv had been brought to the hospital dead by a 108 ambulance service. The cause of death was described as unknown.

Police registered Merg Intimation No. 28/2020. After the inquest, the body was sent for post-mortem. The post-mortem examination, conducted by Dr. Sumitra Uraon (PW-21) on 19 April 2020, found fracture of the thyroid cartilage, congestion of the trachea, damage to neck muscles with dark clotted blood, congested lungs, and blood-stained froth inside the mouth. She opined that death was caused by asphyxia due to throttling—manual compression of the neck—resulting in cardio-respiratory arrest, and that the death was homicidal in nature. On that basis, Crime No. 173/2020 was registered against an unknown person. Investigation led to a charge-sheet against Naresh Kumar Sahu, based on his memorandum statement (Ex.P/1) and other collected evidence.

The trial court framed charges under Section 302 IPC and Section 3(2)(v) of the Act of 1989. The appellant denied the charges, claimed false implication, and did not adduce any defence evidence. The prosecution examined 21 witnesses and exhibited 21 documents. On 8 August 2024, the Special Court convicted the appellant on both counts and sentenced him to rigorous imprisonment for life under each, with a fine of Rs. 2,000 per count and two months’ additional imprisonment in default. Both sentences ran concurrently. The appellant has been in custody since that date.

The Legal Issue: Can a Phone Call Prove “Last Seen Together”?

The entire prosecution case rested on circumstantial evidence. The principal circumstance relied upon by the trial court was that the deceased was “last seen together” with the appellant.

The sole basis for that finding was the testimony of Smt. Durga Dhruv (PW-2), wife of the deceased. PW-2 deposed that when the deceased did not return home on 18 April 2020, she telephoned him in the afternoon. He told her he was sitting with the appellant and three other persons—Tulsiram, Narottam and Rajendra—and would return shortly. When he still had not returned by about 6:30 p.m., the appellant’s children came to call her. She then found the deceased lying unconscious near the byara adjoining the houses of the appellant, Tulsiram and Narottam.

PW-2 further stated that when she offered water to the deceased, he gestured towards his neck and then pointed towards the appellant and the three other persons who were standing nearby. She understood from the gesture that all four had assaulted him. However, no other prosecution witness stated that they had seen the deceased in the company of the appellant at any point on 18 April 2020.

The appellant’s counsel argued that treating a telephone call—in which the deceased reported his own location—as proof of “last seen together” was a legal error. He also pointed out that the FIR was registered against unknown persons on 20 April 2020, even though PW-2 claimed she had named the appellant to police from the beginning, and that both memorandum witnesses (PW-1 and PW-3) had turned hostile.

How the Division Bench Reasoned

The bench first affirmed without hesitation that the death of Kamal Dhruv was homicidal. The medical evidence of PW-21 and the post-mortem report (Ex.P/12) established that he died of asphyxia caused by throttling. That finding of the trial court was neither perverse nor contrary to evidence and was affirmed.

The question that followed—whether the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that the appellant was the author of the crime—received a different answer.

The bench drew a careful distinction between “last heard” and “last seen together”. The doctrine of “last seen together” requires direct evidence that the deceased was actually seen alive in the company of the accused at or about the time of the occurrence, with the time gap between that sighting and the discovery of the body being so short that the possibility of any other person committing the offence is effectively excluded. No prosecution witness had deposed to having seen the deceased alive with the appellant. PW-2 had only relayed what the deceased told her over the telephone. That, the bench held, was “last heard” evidence, not “last seen together” evidence, and the two cannot be equated in law.

The bench went further: even if the telephone conversation was accepted entirely, the deceased had said he was with four persons, not the appellant alone. No evidence identified who remained with the deceased immediately before the fatal assault. Criminal liability, the bench observed, cannot rest on selective inferences unsupported by legally admissible evidence.

The alleged dying gestures of the deceased did not rescue the prosecution case. PW-2 herself said the gestures were directed towards all four persons standing together. The trial court nonetheless inferred that the deceased intended to implicate only the appellant. The bench rejected that inference as wholly conjectural. Where evidence is reasonably capable of more than one interpretation, the view favourable to the accused must prevail.

The corroborating witnesses fared no better on scrutiny. PW-7, the mother of the deceased, admitted she had neither witnessed the occurrence nor visited the place where the body was found. Her evidence was hearsay as to the actual occurrence. PW-8 Ranu Sahu and PW-14 Yogesh Sahu deposed only that they found the deceased unconscious near the byara and informed PW-2. PW-8 went further in cross-examination: she said the appellant was not at the spot when the deceased was found, as he had gone to his agricultural field. She also deposed that the deceased was a habitual drinker and that villagers initially assumed he was lying there intoxicated.

The bench also noted the material inconsistency between PW-2’s version and the FIR. PW-2 claimed she named the accused to police at the outset, yet the FIR of 20 April 2020 was registered against unknown persons. The prosecution offered no explanation. Significant details—the telephonic conversation and the gestures attributed to the deceased—were absent from the police statements of PW-2 and PW-7 and surfaced for the first time before the court. The bench treated these as material improvements that impaired the credibility of those witnesses, particularly given that the entire case rested on circumstantial evidence.

On the absence of motive, the bench acknowledged that proof of motive is not indispensable in every case. But where the circumstantial chain is itself weak and inconclusive, the absence of any established motive takes on added significance. PW-2 herself conceded that there had been no prior dispute between the deceased and the appellant, except that she had asked the deceased to collect his wages that day.

Applying the five principles from Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra, AIR 1984 SC 1622, the bench found that the prosecution had failed to establish even the foundational circumstance. Once that principal circumstance remained unproved, the remaining circumstances did not collectively form the complete chain required to exclude every reasonable hypothesis consistent with the appellant’s innocence. The bench cited the appellant’s reliance on Arjun Marik v. State of Bihar, 1994 Supp (2) SCC 372, Kanhaiya Lal v. State of Rajasthan, (2014) 4 SCC 715, and Anand Jakappa Pujari @ Gaddadar v. State of Karnataka, 2026 INSC 417, all standing for the proposition that “last seen together” alone is insufficient to sustain a conviction without corroboration forming a complete chain of guilt.

The bench stated plainly: “suspicion, however grave or compelling, can never substitute legal proof.”

Outcome

The Division Bench allowed CRA No. 1599 of 2024 on 6 July 2026. The judgment of conviction and order of sentence dated 8 August 2024 passed by the Special Judge, SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, Raipur, in Special Criminal Case No. 10 of 2021 were set aside in their entirety. Naresh Kumar Sahu was acquitted of all charges, with the benefit of doubt extended to him, and directed to be released forthwith if not required in any other case.

I.A. No. 1 of 2024, the pending application for suspension of sentence and bail, was disposed of as not surviving further consideration.

Under Section 437-A of the Code of Criminal Procedure (now Section 481 of BNSS), the appellant was directed to furnish a personal bond of Rs. 25,000 with two reliable sureties in the like amount before the court concerned, effective for six months, with an undertaking to appear before the Supreme Court if a Special Leave Petition is filed against this judgment.

The trial court record and a copy of this judgment were directed to be sent back to the trial court immediately for compliance.