'No evidence': Supreme Court acquits man sent to gallows by HC

NEW DELHI: The tendency of probe agencies to somehow crack a sensational case and the "overzealous approach" of courts to convict someone to impart justice sent a man to the gallows in a 2013 rape-cum-murder case of a four-year-old girl in Thane in Maharashtra. The Supreme Court held there was nothing to even cast a minimal suspicion against the man and acquitted him, but not before he had spent 12 years in jail.

A bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol and Sandeep Mehta said the flawed and tainted probe led to the failure of the prosecution case involving the gruesome rape-cum-murder of the child and the accused was convicted and sentenced by the courts despite there being hardly any reliable evidence. It said witnesses were created to add "padding" to the case.

SC slams HC's 'overzealous' approach in awarding death
Justice Sandeep Mehta, who penned the judgment, began the verdict by saying the case was yet another example of shabby and perfunctory investigation leading to failure of the prosecution case. He questioned the trial court and Bombay high court for their "overzealous approach" in convicting the man and awarding death sentence when there was no evidence.

"Despite the shabby investigation, the overzealous approach of the courts below to impart justice, in a sense that someone must be held responsible for the crime, has led to the conviction of the appellant herein, who was a young man aged about 25 years at the time of the incident and has remained incarcerated for more than 12 years with the Damocles' sword of impending death penalty hanging over his head for more than six years," the bench said.

In this case, the girl went missing in Sept 2013 and her body was found after three days and the man was picked up a day later. There were no eyewitnesses in the case which was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. The man was convicted and sentenced to death in 2019.

Setting aside the conviction order, the bench said, "Upon an overall appreciation of the evidence of the two investigating officers and the witnesses of the last seen theory and also the sole witness of extra-judicial confession, we are convinced that the entire sequence of events narrated by these witnesses is unreliable and unbelievable. It is clearly a case of concocted depositions secured by the prosecuting agency by way of padding so as to fasten the guilt of this heinous crime on the accused and thereby lay a claim to have solved the case."

The court further added that the findings recorded in the judgments of the trial court and the high court were based on conjectures and surmises and were unsustainable on the face of record.

"The DNA analysis report remains inconclusive and does not implicate the accused appellant. Neither the trial court nor the high court placed reliance on these reports for recording a finding against the accused," it said.

The court said that the only incriminating material against the man was that the soil on his shoes was from the pond where the girl's body was found, which was just an indication of the fact that the accused may have visited the area.

"This, by itself, would not incriminate the accused in any manner... the evidence of the witnesses of last seen circumstance is vacillating, shaky and tainted with wholesale improvements and, hence, unworthy of credence," the bench said, directing that the man be released forthwith.