Supreme Court Acquits Murder Convicts After 45 Years, Finds FIR Was Registered Post-Investigation
A Supreme Court bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta acquits three men of murder charges, finding the FIR was a post-investigation fabrication and the prosecution witnesses were not present at the crime scene.
The Supreme Court on 15 July 2026 acquitted three men convicted of murder under Section 302 read with Section 149 of the Indian Penal Code, setting aside convictions that had stood since 1981 and been affirmed by the Allahabad High Court in 2011. The bench of Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sandeep Mehta held that the prosecution's first information report was, in all probability, a post-investigation document rather than a contemporaneous account of the crime. The Court found that the chik FIR, purportedly registered on 28 June 1977, reached the jurisdictional Magistrate only on 30 June 1977 — a gap neither explained by the trial Court nor noticed by the High Court. Taken together with the unattended dead body, a 48-hour delay in post-mortem, and contradictions in who accompanied the complainant to the police station, the Court held that the prosecution had failed to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
The prosecution case arose from the intervening night of 27/28 June 1977 in District Gonda, Uttar Pradesh. According to the FIR, a group of persons — the complainant Raghav Ram (PW-1), Ram Nath (PW-2) and Nand Lal Singh (PW-4) — were returning from a cattle fair and a market at Colonelganj at about 4:30 p.m. when six accused persons, lying in ambush beneath a bail tree at the western border of village Kanchanpur, emerged armed with a kanta, ballam and lathi and assaulted Harihar Saran, the deceased-victim. The complainant party fled. Harihar Saran could not escape and was killed. Two bicycles allegedly belonging to the accused were found abandoned at the spot.
FIR No. 157 of 1977 was registered that same evening. The accused persons tried were Raj Kishore (Accused No. 1), Hira Lal (Accused No. 2), Raj Bux (Accused No. 3), Ram Dhani (Accused No. 4), Deo Prasad (Accused No. 5) and Subedar (Accused No. 6). Ram Dhani died during the High Court appeal. The trial Court convicted Accused Nos. 1, 2 and 3 under Sections 148 and 302 read with Section 149 IPC, sentencing them to life imprisonment and three years rigorous imprisonment respectively. Accused Nos. 4, 5 and 6 were convicted under Sections 147 and 302 read with Section 149 IPC and sentenced to life imprisonment and two years rigorous imprisonment respectively.
The accused persons appealed to the Allahabad High Court (Lucknow Bench) under Section 374(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. The Division Bench dismissed the appeal on 20 November 2011, affirming both the conviction and the sentence. The accused then approached the Supreme Court by way of special leave. Before the Supreme Court, Raj Kishore (Accused No. 1) and Deo Prasad (Accused No. 5) also died, causing Criminal Appeal No. 237 of 2013 and the portion of Criminal Appeal No. 239 of 2013 relating to Deo Prasad to abate. The surviving appellants before the Court were Hira Lal (Accused No. 2), Raj Bux (Accused No. 3) and Subedar (Accused No. 6).
What the Defence Argued
Counsel for the accused-appellants raised a cluster of inter-connected arguments, all directed at the genuineness of the FIR and the credibility of the eye-witnesses. The principal submissions were: that the alleged occurrence took place at 4:30 p.m. yet the inquest was conducted only the following morning; that the post-mortem was performed as late as 30 June 1977; that despite the police station being barely 3½ miles away, the dead body was left unattended at the spot throughout the intervening night; and that the medical jurist admitted the death could have occurred anywhere between one and a half to two and a half days before the post-mortem, making the prosecution's timing doubtful.
The defence also pointed to prior enmity — Deo Prasad's father had contested a village Pradhan election against the deceased-victim's family — as a motive for false implication. It was further argued that no weapon was recovered from any of the accused; that the prosecution's attempt to link the two abandoned bicycles to specific accused persons was unsupported; and that the eye-witnesses were all interested, partisan witnesses with no independent corroboration.
On behalf of Subedar (Accused No. 6), it was separately argued that he was a minor at the time of the incident and was entitled to the benefit of the Juvenile Justice Act, a plea the High Court had entirely overlooked.
The respondent-State, represented by Mr. Namit Saxena, supported the High Court's judgment. The State contended that the testimonies of PW-1, PW-2 and PW-4 were consistent and cogent; that the post-mortem report confirmed 17 ante-mortem injuries including skull fractures and rupture of the right lung, fully corroborating the ocular account; that the recovery of two bicycles from beneath the bail tree placed the accused at the scene; and that concurrent findings by the trial Court and the High Court warranted no interference under Article 136 of the Constitution of India.
The FIR That Arrived Two Days Late
The Supreme Court's analysis began with what it described as a “striking and glaring circumstance” on the face of the record: the chik FIR (Exhibit Ka-14), purportedly registered on 28 June 1977, bore an endorsement and seal showing it was received in the Magistrate's Court only on 30 June 1977. The Court pointed out that this aspect had not been raised by the parties and had engaged neither the trial Court nor the High Court, yet verification of the original record placed it beyond doubt.
The Court treated this delay in the FIR reaching the Magistrate as the most significant piece of the puzzle. It noted that the law requires prompt dispatch precisely to guard against fabrication, and that a two-day gap, left entirely unexplained by the prosecution, was consistent only with the FIR having been prepared after the investigation was already conducted.
The Court also examined the contradiction surrounding who accompanied the complainant to the police station. PW-1 stated in cross-examination that only Ram Nath (PW-2) had accompanied him and specifically denied that Ram Gopal or Ram Achhaiver had been present. But the General Diary entry recorded by Head Constable Keshri Nandan — a contemporaneous police document — showed that Ram Gopal (father-in-law of the deceased-victim) and Ram Achhaiver (brother of the deceased-victim) had arrived at the station with the complainant. The first Investigating Officer (PW-10) admitted this in cross-examination. The Court held that this direct contradiction between the complainant's testimony and the police's own contemporaneous record struck at the very genesis of the prosecution case.
The Unattended Body and the 48-Hour Post-Mortem Delay
The Court examined the conduct of both the family of the deceased-victim and the police after the FIR was allegedly registered at 7:10 p.m. on 28 June 1977. The police station was 3½ miles from the crime scene. Officers admittedly reached the spot soon after registration. Yet the dead body was left lying on the roadside throughout the intervening night. The inquest was conducted only on 29 June 1977, and the post-mortem was performed only at 1:30 p.m. on 30 June 1977 — nearly 48 hours after the alleged occurrence.
The first Investigating Officer (PW-10) explained that insufficient light prevented the inquest from being completed on the night of 28 June 1977. The Court accepted that explanation for the delay in completing the inquest proceedings. But it found no explanation for why the dead body was not shifted to a secure place, why no guard was posted, and why the post-mortem took until the third day.
Dr. H.C. Srivastava (PW-3), the medical jurist who conducted the post-mortem, found 17 ante-mortem injuries — abrasions, contusions, lacerated and punctured wounds on the skull, face, chest, back, arms and thighs, along with multiple skull fractures, brain matter protruding through punctured wounds, rib fractures and rupture of the right lung. He opined that death resulted from shock and haemorrhage. Crucially, he stated in cross-examination that death could have occurred within a range of one and a half to two and a half days before the post-mortem. He also noted that the stomach and small intestine were empty while faecal matter was present in the large intestine, suggesting the deceased had been in a state of repose for several hours after his last meal.
The Court found that these medical findings were equally consistent with the occurrence having taken place during the intervening night of 28/29 June 1977 rather than at 4:30 p.m. on 28 June 1977, as the prosecution alleged.
Why the Eye-Witness Account Could Not Be Sustained
PW-1, PW-2 and PW-4 gave broadly consistent accounts of the ambush under the bail tree. Each identified the accused persons by name and described the weapons they carried. PW-4 recounted that the assailants shouted “he is the Harihar Saala who implicates all of us” before the assault. Each denied the suggestion that the incident had taken place during the night and reaffirmed personal witnessing of the attack.
The Court did not dismiss their testimony as internally inconsistent. It held instead that the surrounding circumstances made their claimed presence at the scene highly improbable. The Court reasoned: if these witnesses had truly watched a fatal assault in broad daylight and had reported it to the police within three hours, there was no conceivable explanation for the dead body remaining abandoned at the crime scene throughout the night, for the family members not securing the body, and for the police not ensuring its preservation despite being stationed only 3½ miles away.
The Court identified two probable scenarios: either the assault did not occur on 28 June 1977 at all, or it occurred that night rather than that afternoon, with the dead body discovered by villagers the following morning, after which the prosecution story was constructed to project that the eye-witnesses had been present. The Court found that either scenario could not be ruled out on the evidence.
On the bicycle recovery, the Court noted that there were six accused persons but only two bicycles. No reliable evidence established which accused, if any, owned either bicycle. The two court witnesses examined on ownership did not conclusively prove the bicycles belonged to any of the accused. The Court held this evidence was too flimsy to constitute an incriminating circumstance.
Concurrent Findings Reversed
The Court acknowledged the general principle of deference to concurrent findings of the trial Court and the High Court. It held, however, that both courts fell into error by overlooking the vital circumstance of the FIR reaching the Magistrate two days after its purported registration, and by failing to engage with the material contradiction between the complainant's testimony and the police's contemporaneous General Diary entry. These were not minor procedural irregularities, the Court held; they went to the genesis and credibility of the prosecution case and were sufficient, cumulatively, to raise a reasonable doubt that the courts below were not entitled to ignore.
The Court held that “the facts taken together convince us that the FIR (Exhibit Ka-14) is a post investigation document.” Once that conclusion was reached, the prosecution version of the occurrence having taken place on the afternoon of 28 June 1977 was found to be a subsequent fabrication. Without that foundation, the testimony of the eye-witnesses could not be accepted, and the prosecution had not brought on record any other reliable evidence to establish the charges.
Given this finding, the Court declined to examine the separate plea of juvenility raised on behalf of Subedar (Accused No. 6), holding it unnecessary.
Order
Criminal Appeal No. 239 of 2013 (to the extent it related to Subedar, Accused No. 6), Criminal Appeal No. 238 of 2013 (Hira Lal, Accused No. 2) and Criminal Appeal No. 236 of 2013 (Raj Bux, Accused No. 3) were allowed. Criminal Appeal No. 237 of 2013 (Raj Kishore) and the portion of Criminal Appeal No. 239 of 2013 relating to Deo Prasad had already abated on account of the deaths of those appellants.
The judgment of conviction and order of sentence dated 3 June 1981 passed by the III Additional Sessions Judge, Gonda, as affirmed by the High Court's judgment dated 20 November 2011, were set aside. Hira Lal (Accused No. 2), Raj Bux (Accused No. 3) and Subedar (Accused No. 6) were acquitted of all charges. Raj Bux and Subedar, who were on bail, had their bail bonds discharged and were not required to surrender. Hira Lal had already been released pursuant to remission granted by the competent authority, and the Court directed that no further action was required in his case. Pending applications, if any, were disposed of.