He reached the bodies within two hours and said nothing about two men with sticks looking for them

Justices Manoj Misra and Vijay Bishnoi dismissed the State's appeal, holding recoveries made three days after arrest looked stage-managed and the key witness was untrustworthy.

Two men were found dead by the roadside near Gadah Kufri on the night of 6 June 2009, with shattered pieces of wood scattered around them. The Sessions Court convicted two accused under Section 302 read with Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code and sentenced them to life. The Himachal Pradesh High Court acquitted them in 2015. On 17 September 2026 the Supreme Court dismissed the State's appeal, and its reasons turn largely on what one witness did not say on the night it would have mattered most.

An FIR against unknown persons

The first information report was lodged at 4.45 a.m. on 7 June 2009 by the son of one of the deceased. His account was that his father had gone to Theog and had reached the bus stop but not his house; that at about 9.22 p.m. his father told him on the telephone that he would be home in fifteen or twenty minutes and that the other deceased was with him; and that when he could not be reached, the informant went looking and found the two bodies by the roadside at about 10.30 p.m. The FIR named no accused and expressed suspicion against no one.

The trial court convicted on three circumstances: that a witness had seen the two accused at the place where the deceased had been drinking, and that the accused, carrying dandas, had asked another witness which way the deceased had gone shortly before the bodies were found; that blood-stained clothes and the dandas were recovered at the instance of the accused, the clothes carrying the same blood group as the deceased; and that there was enmity, because one of the deceased had been turned out of his house by the father of one of the accused and had since been living with the other deceased.

What the High Court made of it

The High Court found that the forensic examination showed both deceased had consumed alcohol in large quantity, so the possibility of injuries from a fall or a brawl could not be ruled out. It doubted the recovery of the dandas from a pond, because wood would normally float, yet the recovery witness described the accused wading in one after another to retrieve them from the depths; and because that witness had a reason to implicate the accused, a case having been filed against his son by the father of one of them. On the blood-stained clothes, it noted that the investigation never took the accused's own blood samples to exclude the possibility that they shared the blood group, and that without DNA profiling the match proved little.

The witness who stayed silent

The Supreme Court restated the standard for a circumstantial case: each incriminating circumstance must be proved beyond reasonable doubt; the circumstances established must be consistent only with the hypothesis of guilt and must be conclusive in nature and tendency; and together they must form a chain so complete as to exclude every hypothesis except guilt.

The occurrence was at night, by the side of a public road, with no eyewitness. The witness who spoke of seeing the accused near the drinking spot did not say they were carrying dandas, did not say they stopped or spoke to anyone, and his ability to identify them in the darkness was itself in question.

The central witness was the nephew of one of the deceased, and therefore interested. In cross-examination he said that he reached the spot at about midnight after a call from the informant and saw the bodies. He admitted that although the informant was present, he did not tell him that the two accused, carrying dandas, had asked him which way the deceased had gone. The Court found that improbable in a close relative who would have known of the enmity, and noted that the FIR was registered against unknown persons without any suspicion expressed against anyone.

For the principle the Court turned to Kali Ram v. State of H.P., where it was observed that a witness who professes to know of a gravely incriminating circumstance and keeps silent about it for over two months loses most of the value of that statement in the absence of cogent reason. The gap here was hours rather than months, but the Court said each case must be decided on its own facts and the inference drawn accordingly. The police recorded this witness's statement on the morning of 7 June and arrested both accused the same day; if the circumstance was grave enough to justify immediate arrest, its non-disclosure at the first opportunity created a serious doubt that the case was contrived on suspicion.

Recoveries three days after arrest

The recoveries did not repair the gap. The accused were arrested on 7 June 2009 but the clothes and the dandas were recovered on 10 June. The evidence was that both accused were taken to their respective houses on the same day, each going in and retrieving his own blood-stained clothes. The witness to that recovery was the same interested nephew, and the other seizure witness was not examined. The dandas were recovered from the pond by the accused entering it one after the other, witnessed by the man against whose son a report had been lodged, and again the second seizure witness was not examined. The accused denied the recoveries in their statements under Section 313 of the Code. The Court held the recoveries, made three days after arrest, appear stage-managed and artificial, and once the nephew's testimony was found untrustworthy, little remained of the prosecution case.

Order

The Court found no merit in the appeal. The appeal was dismissed and pending applications disposed of.