After 13 yrs in jail, man on death row & another serving life term acquitted

New Delhi: The conviction of two persons in the 2012 rape-murder of a 12-year-old girl in UP was overturned by Supreme Court on Tuesday, after the duo had spent 13 years in jail. One of them was sentenced to death and the other life imprisonment.

The apex court pulled up police for a shabby investigation. A bench of justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol and Sandeep Mehta quashed the 2018 Allahabad HC order, by which the conviction and sentence awarded by a trial court in 2014 was upheld, and directed that the two be released forthwith. It said the HC had made a grave error in placing reliance on the evidence, including DNA profiling, which had glaring discrepancies.

The only evidence against the two was that clothes and other items belonging to the girl were found in the agricultural field of the main accused and a comb found near the body allegedly belonged to the second accused. SC noted that these were not sent for forensic examination.

"...The scientific analysis of these articles might have provided vital evidence for proving the guilt of the accused-appellants or otherwise. The very fact that the investigating officer (Narad Muni Singh) did not consider it essential to send the articles to FSL gives rise to a strong suspicion that the recovery of these articles was a planted recovery," SC said. The court also noted that recovery of the victim's underwear was not initially mentioned in the report. It said the omission was far too significant to be overlooked. "...the same seems to be a planted recovery and a creation by the investigating officer intended to give succor to the prosecution case," SC said.

"We feel that the present case is yet another classic example of lacklustre and shabby investigation and so also laconic trial procedure which has led to the failure of a case involving brutal rape and murder of an innocent girl child," it said.


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