He telephoned the husband to come home, said he had found her hanging from the fan, and the forensic examination of the fan said otherwise
Justices Gita Gopi and L.S. Pirzada dismissed a 97-page appeal against conviction, holding that motive need not be separately proved where the accused's own conduct supplies it.
On 9 January 2018 a man on duty took a telephone call at about 4.15 p.m. from his friend, who insisted he return home immediately. He got there and found his wife lying on the bed, with his friend present in the house. They took her for medical treatment and the doctor declared her dead. Asked what had happened, the friend told him he had seen her hanging from the fan. The death was registered as an accident case; the complaint came on 11 January 2018, after the post-mortem.
The friend was tried alone as the sole accused and convicted by the 2nd Additional Sessions Judge, Nadiad, on 30 July 2018: life imprisonment with a fine of ₹6,000 under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, seven years' rigorous imprisonment with a fine of ₹2,000 under Section 201, and two years' rigorous imprisonment under Section 203, each with a default stipulation. On 14 October 2026 a Division Bench of the Gujarat High Court dismissed his appeal and upheld the conviction and sentence.
The case the defence made
Mr I.H. Syed, senior advocate, built the appeal on gaps in a circumstantial case rather than on a competing account. The reasons assigned by the trial court, he submitted, were neither cogent nor sustainable, and the evidence led was neither credible nor trustworthy nor sufficient to convict for an offence punishable with life imprisonment.
On the complainant's evidence, he pointed out that the husband had not spoken of any overt or covert act by the appellant. All the complainant deposed to was that the appellant telephoned him and asked him to come home urgently — a communication which, it was submitted, does not connect the appellant with the crime and at highest establishes his presence at or around the time of the incident. That circumstance by itself could not sustain a conviction for so heinous an offence.
On last seen, he submitted that the trial court was wrong to rely on PW9 Kirtiben Ahuja and her husband PW10 Gautam Ahuja for corroboration. Neither deposed to having seen the appellant entering or leaving the deceased's house; at most, on their evidence taken in its entirety, he was seen entering the society in which she lived, and beyond that they spoke to no circumstance connecting him with the crime. In any event, evidence of last seen cannot by itself discharge the prosecution's burden and requires corroboration, which was glaringly absent.
The sharpest point concerned a man the prosecution never called. PW9 deposed to receiving a call at about 5 p.m. on the day of the incident from one Indrajeet Rathod, telling her that the deceased had committed suicide by hanging. Rathod was never examined. Neither the appellant nor the complainant had called him, and no prosecution witness spoke of calling him; how he came to know remains, counsel said, mysterious, and the absence of positive evidence on the point casts serious doubt on the theory that the appellant alone was in the deceased's company shortly before her death.
The rest was the standard law on circumstantial cases: every incriminating circumstance must be clearly established by reliable and clinching evidence; the circumstances proved must form a complete chain from which the only irresistible conclusion is guilt, leaving no hypothesis consistent with innocence; and there is always the danger in such cases that conjecture or suspicion takes the place of legal proof.
What the accused's own telephone call did to his case
There is a feature of this case that distinguishes it from the ordinary circumstantial prosecution, and it is the accused's own conduct rather than any witness. It was he who telephoned the husband and insisted he come home immediately. It was he who was in the house when the husband arrived. It was he who supplied the explanation for what the husband found — that he had seen her hanging from the fan. And it was that explanation, and no other, which caused the death to be registered as an accident case rather than investigated as a homicide, with the complaint following only two days later after the post-mortem.
Senior counsel's answer to that was precise: the call establishes presence at or around the time of the incident and nothing more, and presence is not participation. The Bench accepted the premise and rejected the conclusion. Presence in the house was undeniable; what made it decisive was that the person present had offered an account of the death which the scientific evidence excluded, and could not explain the account he had given. Non-explanation of certain circumstances was held not to be vital precisely because the explanation lay with the accused himself.
Why the hanging story failed
The Bench's reasoning turns on the scientific and medical evidence, because it is what makes the appellant's own explanation impossible.
The presence of the accused in the house of the deceased and the complainant was found to be an undeniable fact. He himself could not explain the story of suicide by hanging from the ceiling fan. The Forensic Science Laboratory report on examination of the place of incident as well as of the body of the ceiling fan ruled out any case of hanging.
The post-mortem supplied the cause of death: neurogenic shock associated with head injury, and cardio-respiratory arrest due to blockage of the upper airway by external pressure. The doctor had immediately informed that the cause of death was external pressure. The injury to the deceased was corroborated by the evidence of PW2, the appellant's employer, to whom the head injury was also shown; the Court therefore rejected the submission that the head injury could not be definitely proved. The cause of death as stated in the post-mortem report was held proved on the record.
From that the two accessory offences followed. The fact of giving false information by projecting the case as one of suicide by hanging stood proved, so Section 203 became believable; and the attempt to cause the disappearance of evidence of the offence with intent to shield himself having been proved at trial, Section 201 was also made out. It is worth noting the procedural consequence of the false report: the death was initially registered as an accident case, and it was only after the post-mortem that a complaint followed.
The missing witnesses and the missing footage
The Court dealt with each alleged break in the chain. Non-explanation of certain circumstances was held not to be vital, since the explanation lay with the accused himself. Many of the complainant's co-workers had gone to the hospital where the post-mortem was conducted, and PW9 had received her information from Indrajeet Rathod while she was at tuition; the contention built on his non-examination was therefore held untenable.
On the non-examination of the complainant's eleven-year-old daughter, the Court found it was not established that she was in the house when the appellant was there with the deceased. No question had been put to the complainant about whether his daughter was present when he returned home on the appellant's call. In the absence of evidence of her presence at the relevant time, her non-examination could not be treated as a missing link.
Non-production of CCTV camera footage was held not to be vital in view of the evidence of the eyewitnesses who proved the accused being seen going towards the house of the deceased, the fact that he was found there, the fact that he himself called the complainant, and the time of the incident, which stood proved through the evidence of his employer.
Motive
The Court held that the major circumstances had been proved by substantive corroborative evidence and that the testimony of the prosecution witnesses supported the prosecution case. On motive it stated the proposition shortly: motive need not be proved by separate independent evidence, and the conduct of the accused would itself be sufficient evidence to believe the motive behind the murder. The prosecution had successfully proved the case of murder, and the whole chain of events pointing to guilt had been proved at trial.
The three convictions fit together in a way that is worth stating. Section 302 rests on the medical and forensic evidence of how she died. Section 201 rests on the attempt to make that death look like something else. And Section 203 rests on the false information by which the attempt was carried out — the account of a hanging, given to the husband and through him to the authorities, which kept the matter as an accident case for two days. The sentences on the two accessory counts are, in substance, punishment for the story that nearly worked.
Finding no reason to dislodge the observations and reasoning of the trial court, and no circumstance proved at trial that would support the hypothesis of innocence, the Bench declined to interfere. The appeal was dismissed, the judgment and order of conviction and sentence of 30 July 2018 upheld, and the registry directed to send the record and proceedings back to the trial court forthwith. The connected application for suspension of sentence did not survive and was disposed of accordingly. Mr L.B. Dabhi appeared as Additional Public Prosecutor for the State.
The appeal was argued on the proposition that each incriminating circumstance must be clearly established and the chain complete, which is the correct test. What the Bench found was that the chain was complete, and that the link the defence attacked hardest — the telephone call — was the one the accused had forged himself.