Supreme Court Acquits Murder Convict as Hostile Witness Evidence Demolishes Prosecution Case
A Division Bench of the Supreme Court set aside concurrent convictions under IPC and the SC/ST Act, holding that hostile witness testimony can ground an acquittal when it credibly destroys the prosecution’s case.
The Supreme Court on 13 May 2026 acquitted Talari Naresh of murder and offences under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, setting aside a life sentence confirmed by the Telangana High Court. Justice N.V. Anjaria, writing for a bench also comprising Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra, found that the prosecution’s own witnesses had unravelled its case. The sole accompanying eyewitness turned hostile and directly contradicted the deceased’s mother, the primary witness. The postmortem report was riddled with irreconcilable discrepancies the doctor could not explain. The Court held that both the Trial Court and the High Court had committed a concurrent error in recording and confirming the conviction, and that the evidence, taken as a whole, was too weak and contradictory to sustain guilt.
How the Case Reached the Supreme Court
The incident was alleged to have occurred on 12 May 2013 in village Ogipur, Ranga Reddy District. The prosecution case was that the deceased, Shiva Shankar, had eloped with the appellant’s younger sister in February 2013. A village Panchayat was said to have resolved the matter by directing the deceased to leave Ogipur and the girl to return to her parental home. Shiva Shankar subsequently went to live with his maternal uncles at Ekmai Village.
On 12 May 2013, Shiva Shankar returned to Ogipur to attend a friend’s wedding. The prosecution alleged that when he was passing near the appellant’s house that morning, the appellant confronted him. A quarrel broke out and the appellant picked up a shabad stone — described as six inches long, four inches wide and three inches thick — and beat Shiva Shankar with it. The deceased’s mother, Padmamma (PW1), was said to have rushed to the scene after being informed by Narendar (PW3), who had been accompanying the deceased. PW1 claimed she was also struck below her left eye and was abused with a casteist slur. Shiva Shankar was taken to Government Hospital, Tandur, and then referred to a hospital in Hyderabad, but died on the way.
The appellant belonged to the Mudiraj backward class community; the deceased was from the Mala Scheduled Caste community. The Special Sessions Judge for SC/ST Act offences at L.B. Nagar convicted the appellant under Sections 302 and 323 of the IPC and under Sections 3(2)(v) and 3(1)(x) of the SC/ST Act, sentencing him to life imprisonment for the murder and the Section 3(2)(v) offence, with shorter concurrent terms for the remaining counts. The Telangana High Court confirmed the conviction and sentence on 4 February 2025 in Criminal Appeal No. 1111 of 2017. The appellant then approached the Supreme Court by way of a special leave petition, which was converted into a criminal appeal.
The Prosecution’s Case Unravels: Hostile Witnesses and a Contradicted Narrative
The prosecution rested its case on two eyewitnesses: PW1, the deceased’s mother, and PW3, the friend who had been walking with the deceased. PW3 was declared hostile. His evidence in court directly contradicted PW1’s account. PW3 testified that the deceased had asked him to leave, that he returned to his own house and never went to PW1’s home to inform her. When confronted with his earlier statement under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, PW3 said that statement was false and had been made at the instance of the accused.
The Panchayat — which the prosecution presented as the motive for the killing — fared no better. Tammanna (PW4) and Narsimha Reddy (PW5), both of whom knew the appellant and his sister Sivamala, turned hostile and each stated that no Panchayat had been held regarding the elopement. No other evidence corroborated the holding of any such Panchayat.
The scene of the alleged offence was the main road near quarries, where trucks and lorries moved around the clock. The investigating officer, PW10, visited the crime scene only the following day, meaning it was not protected. Despite the public and busy nature of the location, the prosecution examined no independent bystander or passerby as a witness.
PW1 remained the sole witness asserting the prosecution’s version. The Court applied the caution articulated in Masalti v. State of Uttar Pradesh [1964] 8 SCR 133 and Bhaskarrao and Others v. State of Maharashtra (2018) 6 SCC 591, both of which warn that the evidence of a partisan or interested witness must be weighed with care, particularly where discrepancies and contradictions are present. The Court found that the contradictions in PW1’s account, when read against the hostile evidence of PW3 and the denial of the Panchayat by PW4 and PW5, left her testimony without reliable corroboration.
Medical Evidence: Discrepancies That Could Not Be Explained
The postmortem examination was conducted by Dr. Sridhar (PW7). The Postmortem Report (Ex. P8) recorded the cause of death as “massive intracranial haemorrhage secondary to head injury leading to cardiorespiratory arrest.” However, the report contained a significant internal inconsistency. The Inquest Report (Ex. P7) stated that the postmortem was concluded at 2:30 pm on 13 May 2013, while Ex. P8 stated it was concluded on 14 May 2013 at 4:00 pm. The opinion on time of death placed it at 12 to 24 hours before the autopsy. If the date of 14 May 2013 were accepted, that time-of-death window would not correlate with the known facts of the case.
PW7’s explanation — that he had written the wrong date because he was on a 24-hour night duty — did not satisfy the Court. The Wound Certificate (Ex. P15) bore no date at all. The Court applied the settled position, drawn from Ghulam Hassan Beigh v. Mohammad Maqbool Magrey (2022) 12 SCC 657, that a postmortem report is not substantive evidence by itself and must be corroborated by the doctor’s oral testimony. Since PW7 could not satisfactorily explain the discrepancies, the evidentiary value of the medical evidence was, in the Court’s assessment, reduced to nil.
The Court’s Reasoning on Hostile Witness Evidence
The Court addressed the legal status of hostile witness testimony at length, drawing on Khujji @ Surendra Tiwari v. State of Madhya Pradesh (1991) 3 SCC 627, Koli Lakhmanbhai Chanabhai v. State of Gujarat (1999) 8 SCC 624, Bhagwan Singh v. State of Haryana (1976) 1 SCC 389, and Himanshu alias Chintu v. State (NCT of Delhi) (2011) 2 SCC 36. These decisions establish that the evidence of a hostile witness is not wiped from the record; it remains admissible and may be relied upon to the extent it is dependable and corroborated.
The Court then extended this principle in the other direction. If hostile witness evidence can support a conviction when corroborated by other reliable evidence, the same evidence can equally support an acquittal when it credibly undermines the prosecution’s case. The Court stated that the testimony of a hostile witness “could be properly employed to discredit the prosecution case” and that a conclusion of acquittal could be founded on it.
Applying that principle, the Court found that PW3’s hostile evidence, read together with the denials by PW4 and PW5, demolished the fulcrum of the prosecution’s narrative. The very occurrence of the incident had become doubtful. The motive — the Panchayat and the elopement backstory — was unproved. The medical evidence had collapsed under its own inconsistencies. No independent witness from a busy public road had been examined.
The Court concluded that both the Trial Court and the High Court had erred in convicting the appellant on this body of evidence, describing it as “weak, contradictory and crumbling.”
Order
The Supreme Court allowed the appeal. The judgment and order dated 4 February 2025 of the High Court for the State of Telangana in Criminal Appeal No. 1111 of 2017, confirming the conviction and sentence recorded by the Special Sessions Judge in SC/ST S.C. No. 51 of 2014, was set aside. The appellant Talari Naresh was acquitted of all charges under the IPC and the SC/ST Act and directed to be set at liberty forthwith, unless required to be detained in connection with any other offence. All pending interlocutory applications were held not to survive.