Supreme Court Upholds Acquittal in Murder Case Where Circumstantial Evidence Chain Was Incomplete

A bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and Prasanna B. Varale declined to reverse the Rajasthan High Court’s acquittal, finding the prosecution’s circumstantial evidence disjointed and insufficient to exclude innocence.

The Supreme Court on 25 May 2026 dismissed criminal appeals filed by the complainant and the State of Rajasthan against the acquittal of four accused persons charged with the abduction and murder of a taxi driver in 2007. A division bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and Prasanna B. Varale, exercising jurisdiction under Article 136 of the Constitution, found that the Rajasthan High Court had taken a plausible view in reversing the Trial Court’s conviction. The prosecution’s case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence, and the Court found that the chain of circumstances was incomplete at every material link — from the recovery of the dead body to the identification of the accused and the articles allegedly recovered from them.

How the Case Reached the Supreme Court

On 26 April 2007, Ashok Kumar Sharma, who operated a Bolero Jeep as a taxi, was hired by two individuals from his brother’s shop in Khetri and never returned. His brother, Pawan Kumar Sharma, lodged a missing report on 28 April 2007. The police arrested four persons — Manoj Kumar, Manjeet Kumar @ Billu, Balraj @ Tiloo, and Vijay Singh @ Sunder — along with a juvenile, Surendra Kumar, who was tried separately before the Juvenile Justice Board.

A charge sheet was filed for offences under Sections 364, 302, 396, and 201 read with Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. The prosecution examined 18 witnesses and produced 65 documents. The accused examined no witnesses, producing only four documents.

The Trial Court convicted all four accused on 26 July 2008, sentencing each to life imprisonment under Sections 364/120B, 302/120B, and 396 of the IPC, with three years’ rigorous imprisonment under Section 201. The High Court of Rajasthan at Jaipur, in three consolidated appeals decided on 30 January 2015, reappreciated the evidence and acquitted all four. The complainant and the State then filed separate criminal appeals before the Supreme Court, which were heard together.

The Standard for Interfering with an Acquittal

Before examining the evidence, the Court set out the threshold it would apply. Citing State of M.P. v. Paltan Mallah, (2005) 3 SCC 169, the Court recalled that it would be slow to interfere with an acquittal unless there was perverse appreciation of evidence resulting in a serious miscarriage of justice. Where two views are possible and the High Court has chosen one that is just and reasonable, interference is not warranted.

The Court also referred to State of Punjab v. Kewal Krishan, (2023) 13 SCC 695, which held that extraordinary jurisdiction under Article 136 may be exercised only when the High Court has adopted a legally erroneous and perverse approach, ignoring vital facts, and the acquittal has caused a grave and substantial miscarriage of justice.

Applying these tests, the Court concluded that the High Court had committed no error.

Why the Recovery of the Dead Body Was Doubted

The prosecution’s case against Balraj @ Tiloo rested substantially on the claim that the dead body of the deceased was discovered pursuant to his disclosure statement. The Court found three independent reasons to doubt this.

First, Pawan Kumar Sharma had filed only a missing report on 28 April 2007. The police had no information at that stage that the deceased had been killed. Yet the arrest memo for Balraj @ Tiloo, prepared on the same date, recorded that he was arrested for offences under Sections 302, 394, and 201 of the IPC. The Court found this sequence difficult to reconcile.

Second, the testimony of PW5 Basant Singh, an independent witness, directly undermined the prosecution’s account. PW5 stated that the police had already visited and examined the well from which the body was eventually recovered on 28 April 2007 itself, and that none of the accused were present at the spot when the recovery was made on 29 April 2007. The Trial Court had entirely ignored this testimony. The High Court treated it as a crucial piece of evidence that challenged the prosecution’s narrative, and the Supreme Court agreed.

Third, the dead body was recovered in the presence of only one witness — PW2, who was the uncle of the deceased — and one Ramawtar, who was never produced for examination before the Court. The Court held that the failure to produce Ramawtar, who was an independent witness, amounted to withholding material evidence and created a further doubt about the alleged recovery.

The Court reiterated the settled position that suspicion, however strong, cannot substitute for legal evidence sufficient to convict an accused person.

The Bolero Jeep Recovery and the Evidence Against Manjeet Kumar @ Billu

The prosecution also relied on the alleged recovery of the deceased’s Bolero Jeep at the instance of Balraj @ Tiloo. PW14’s testimony, however, showed that the vehicle was recovered from a road and not from the accused’s possession. The Court applied the principle from Jaikam Khan v. State of U.P., (2021) 13 SCC 716, that recoveries from places accessible to one and all cannot be relied upon to connect an accused to a crime.

As for Manjeet Kumar @ Billu, the prosecution relied on the recovery of a tape recorder and a quartz watch said to belong to the deceased. The High Court had found that neither article was subjected to a Test Identification Parade. The Court agreed, quoting the High Court’s observation that identification of recovered objects without a TIP is “absolutely meaningless in the eyes of law.”

The Court drew support from Thammaraya & Anr. v. The State of Karnataka, (2025) 3 SCC 590, which held that failure to conduct a TIP of recovered articles, particularly when the prosecution case rests solely on such recoveries, creates holes in the prosecution story that cannot be mended. Without a TIP, the Court held, it would be conjectural to presume that the tape recorder came from the jeep or that the watch belonged to the deceased.

A towel recovered from the house of Vijay Singh @ Sunder, alleged to be the murder weapon, was similarly discarded. The Court noted that a towel is a common household object and that the towel in question bore no bloodstains or any other incriminating material connecting it to the deceased.

Last Seen Together and the Limits of Section 106

The case against Vijay Singh @ Sunder rested primarily on the theory of last seen together. PW1 Pawan Kumar Sharma and PW8 Rajendra Kumar identified him in a Test Identification Parade and stated that they had seen him and the juvenile Surendra hire the deceased’s vehicle. The High Court had found that these three pieces of evidence — last seen, silence about the deceased’s whereabouts, and identification by PW1 and PW8 — established only a strong suspicion, not proof beyond reasonable doubt.

The appellants argued that once the accused was shown to have been last seen with the deceased, the burden shifted to him under Section 106 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, to explain what happened. The Court rejected this argument by reference to its recent decision in Manoj @ Munna v. State of Chhattisgarh, 2025 INSC 1466.

That decision had clarified that Section 106 does not shift the primary burden of proof, which in a criminal trial always remains on the prosecution. An adverse inference under Section 106 can be drawn only when the prosecution has already established its case beyond reasonable doubt. The Court also reiterated the principle from Kanhaiya Lal v. State of Rajasthan, (2014) 4 SCC 715, that last seen together is a weak piece of evidence and conviction cannot rest on it alone without corroboration.

The Court found no infirmity in the High Court’s conclusion that it would be wholly unsafe to convict Vijay Singh @ Sunder on the basis of a strong suspicion alone.

The Governing Test for Circumstantial Evidence

The Court restated the governing standard from Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra, (1984) 4 SCC 116, which in turn drew on Hanumant v. State of Madhya Pradesh. To convict on circumstantial evidence, the prosecution must prove each incriminating circumstance beyond reasonable doubt; the circumstances must be of a conclusive nature unerringly pointing to guilt; they must form a complete chain leaving no reasonable ground for a conclusion consistent with innocence; and they must exclude every hypothesis other than guilt.

The Court found that the prosecution’s evidence was disjointed and not interlinked. Instead of placing the Court on a firm footing, the prosecution had left it, in the High Court’s words, “groping in the dark.” The Supreme Court agreed that the High Court had meticulously separated grain from the chaff and arrived at a plausible conclusion that the chain of circumstances was incomplete.

Outcome

The Supreme Court dismissed all six criminal appeals — Criminal Appeal Nos. 1353–1355, 1356, 1357, and 1358 of 2017 — filed by the complainant Pawan Kumar Sharma and the State of Rajasthan. The acquittal of Manoj Kumar, Manjeet Kumar @ Billu, Balraj @ Tiloo, and Vijay Singh @ Sunder recorded by the Rajasthan High Court on 30 January 2015 stands confirmed.