Supreme Court Acquits Two Murder Convicts as Eyewitness Accounts Show Ring of Falsity
A Division Bench of Justices J. B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran reversed concurrent conviction findings, holding that pervasive inconsistencies among close-relative witnesses raised a reasonable hypothesis of innocence.
The Supreme Court on 8 September 2026 acquitted two men who had been convicted of murder and sentenced under Section 302 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 and Section 27 of the Arms Act, 1959. The convictions, affirmed by the High Court, were set aside after the Court found that the eyewitness evidence — drawn almost entirely from close relatives of the deceased — was riddled with internal contradictions, corroborated by a deeply deficient investigation. The Court held that these circumstances together generated a reasonable hypothesis of innocence that precluded a safe conviction, and ordered the appellants released forthwith.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
The prosecution's case arose from a dispute over blocked drainage that caused waterlogging in front of the deceased's house. The quarrel escalated into a violent confrontation involving two families. Five accused were charged. The allegation was that one accused (A2) shot the deceased in the left side of the chest, killing him, while another (A1) fired at other family members and injured them. Three of the five accused were acquitted by the Trial Court. A1 and A2 were convicted. The High Court affirmed both convictions and the sentences. A1 and A2, as appellants, challenged that judgment before the Supreme Court in Criminal Appeal No. 1223 of 2022.
The prosecution examined twelve witnesses; the defence examined three. The eyewitnesses — PW2, PW3, PW5, PW6, and PW10 — were all sons, daughters, or the daughter-in-law of the deceased. PW8 from a nearby village was presented as an independent eyewitness. PW4, a neighbour, confirmed the motive but did not see the incident itself.
Contradictions That Undermined the Prosecution Case
The Court examined the testimony of each witness with care and found a consistent pattern of contradiction between what witnesses said in court and what they had disclosed in their statements recorded under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
PW5, the deceased's daughter, was confronted in cross-examination with multiple omissions from her Section 161 statement. She claimed her clothes were blood-stained after she hugged her father when he fell, yet she then went directly to the hospital and stayed overnight as an inpatient. The Court found her presence at the scene doubtful.
PW6, the daughter-in-law, claimed that pellets struck both her and her two-and-a-half-year-old child. Yet her Section 161 statement said only that A2 fired two shots, one of which hit her on the head. Medical evidence from PW7, the doctor who examined PW5, PW6, and PW10, showed only simple abrasion injuries — not the injuries consistent with a lathi attack and multiple gunshots. The child was not found to have sustained any injuries at all. Neither PW5 nor PW6 was recorded as an inpatient in the medical record.
PW8, the purported independent witness from the adjacent village, claimed he was walking back with PW2 when the incident occurred. PW2 made no mention of PW8 accompanying him. PW8 also admitted in cross-examination that he had come to the scene after hearing shots, not that he witnessed the shooting itself.
A fundamental inconsistency ran through the eyewitness accounts on a basic question: where was the body taken after the shooting? PW10, the first informant, stated that the body was taken to the police station. PW2 stated it was taken to the hospital. The inquest report and the Investigating Officer's testimony confirmed the body went to the police station. PW6, however, testified that her father-in-law had not died immediately and that she could feel his pulse when he was taken away.
Medical Evidence and the Survival Window
The postmortem was conducted by PW11, who found a gunshot injury as the cause of death, with distorted pellets and a cartridge cover recovered from the body. PW11 testified that a person of the deceased's age and health could have survived for three to six hours with the injury sustained. The injury was deposed as having been caused within 24 hours of the postmortem, which was conducted at 09:15 am.
This expert opinion assumed significance when read against the defence evidence. DW1, a witness from an adjacent village, testified that he was passing at night on the way to inquire about his ailing sister when he heard shouts and gunshots. He said he shone a torch towards the sound and saw a man lying prostrate, surrounded by persons carrying lathis and guns who were shouting slogans of Inqilab Zindabad. He said he fled when the group turned on him.
The Court acknowledged that it would ordinarily have discarded DW1's evidence but held that, coupled with the circumstances already identified, it could not be ignored. The possibility that the deceased could have survived for three to six hours made the body's destination — the police station rather than a hospital — a suspicious circumstance that required explanation. None was offered.
Investigative Failures
The Court catalogued what it described as an absence of effective investigation. No map of the scene of occurrence was prepared, even though PW10 said the Investigating Officer visited the site on the very night of the incident. Nothing was recovered from the scene. The blood-stained clothes of the relatives of the deceased were not seized or sent for medical examination. No attempt was made to take the accused into custody and carry out recoveries.
A1 surrendered at a different police station. A2 surrendered before the Court. The Investigating Officer wrote to the Superintendent of Police requesting cancellation of one accused's gun licence, yet the licence itself was never produced in evidence and nothing was placed on record to confirm one of the accused had a licensed firearm at all. A rod allegedly recovered from A1's house for cleaning a gun barrel was never produced in court.
The Court pointed out that had the licence been produced, the nature of the licensed weapon could have been established. That would have allowed forensic comparison with the cartridge cover recovered from the body. The opportunity was not taken.
The Court also noted that the eyewitnesses described A1 as carrying a ‘licensed’ weapon. It observed that the mere sight of a weapon cannot disclose whether it is licensed, and that this characterisation “smacks of premeditation to frame the accused” who was known to hold a licence. The observation was made in the context of assessing the reliability of the eyewitness accounts, not as a finding of malicious prosecution.
The Reasoning: Hypothesis of Innocence
The Court drew on Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra, (1984) 4 SCC 116, for the proposition that where a reasonable hypothesis of innocence is available from the circumstances, the court is restrained from entering a conviction.
The Court acknowledged that Sharad Birdhichand Sarda was decided in the context of purely circumstantial evidence, and that the present case involved direct eyewitness evidence. It nonetheless held that the principle applied here because the direct evidence itself was so compromised by discrepancies and surrounding circumstances that it could not be accepted without reservation.
The Court was careful to distinguish the general rule on related witnesses. It held that related witnesses cannot be called interested witnesses merely on account of their relationship with the deceased. However, where circumstances reveal “a ring of falsity in their testimonies,” a closer scrutiny is warranted. The Court found that standard met in this case.
The Court also drew attention to the fact that the Trial Court had acquitted three other accused despite specific overt acts being alleged against them, and the High Court had affirmed those acquittals. Against that backdrop, the conviction of A1 and A2 alone was difficult to sustain on the same body of evidence.
Taken together — the inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts, the medical evidence suggesting the deceased was not killed instantaneously, the body being taken to the police station rather than a hospital, the complete failure of investigation to recover any weapon or produce any licence, the absence of any scene map, and the doubtful presence of PW5 and PW6 — the Court held that the circumstances did not lead solely to a hypothesis of guilt.
Order
The Supreme Court allowed Criminal Appeal No. 1223 of 2022. Both appellants were acquitted. The Court directed that they be released from custody forthwith if they remained in custody and were not required in any other case. If they were on bail, their bail bonds were ordered cancelled. All pending applications were rejected.