Four acquitted in murder case after 32 years

LUCKNOW: Giving weightage to medical evidence over eyewitness account clubbed with other circumstances, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has acquitted four persons in a murder case, allowing their appeal after 32 years.
A division bench of Justice Imtiaz Murtaza and Justice Vishnu Chandra Gupta said "ocular testimony is in direct conflict with the medical evidence" while rejecting the prosecution's evidence.
A Rae Bareli sessions court on November 18,1981, had awarded life term to four persons -- Prem, Ram Naresh, Ranjeet and Ramroop -- for killing one Mustaqim on March 13, 1979.
The accused wanted to take revenue as the victim had allegedly had tried to molest a woman of their family six months ago. The deceased had left the village Mawaiya falling in Shiv Garh police station and had returned on the day of the incident only.
Two witnesses, Shahzad Ali and Munawwar, had claimed they had tried to save the victim. The duo also said the accused were armed with a sharp-edged weapon and lathis.
The high court found that there were several burn injuries on the body of the deceased and no injury was caused by lathis. Appellants' counsel HS Ibrahim pleaded that the two eyewitnesses were not present at the scene of crime and hence the postmortem report did not tally with the ocular version.