Court slams MP for withholding ‘dying declaration’ of woman

Bhopal/Jabalpur: Calling the prosecution “intellectually dishonest”, Madhya Pradesh high court has dismissed an appeal by the state govt challenging a trial court order acquitting a man accused of culpable homicide and dowry harassment after his wife died of burns in Panna district.

In its Jan 15 order, the HC expressed “dismay” over the prosecution not producing the dying declaration, in wh-ich she had said no one was responsible for her death.


On May 30, 2020, Kavita Vishwas sustained burn injuries at her house after she spilled tea on herself while preparing it. She was taken to a hospital, where she died on June 26, 2020. Her dying declaration mentioned that hot tea fell on her and no one was responsible for it.

Her husband, Prakash Vishwas, however, was accused in the case.

“We are dismayed after perusal of record how intellectually dishonest prosecution can be,” a division bench of Justice Vivek Agarwal and Justice Ram Kumar Chaube said. “The dying declaration was admittedly recorded by Deepa Chaturvedi, a naib tahsildar then posted at Panna. In our opinion, the onus was on the prosecution to bring contradictions on record... But the prosecution was dishonest in not producing the dying declaration recorded by naib tehsildar, who happens to be a govt official.”

“The prosecutor is a ‘state’ and, therefore, it should be fair enough to produce all evidence collected during investigation and it should be left to the court to come to its own conclusion,” it said.

The judges said the dying declaration was made in the presence of Kavita’s parents and brother and they had admitted to this. Her relatives were the complainants in the dowry death case.

The judges said, “We are of the opinion that the present appeal, like other appeals of the state against orders of acquittal, has been filed without application of mind. We had requested the govt counsel to contemplate withdrawal of the present appeal, but he made a statement that there are no directions for withdrawal of the present appeal.”