Overzealous investigation is as fatal as lethargic and tardy: Supreme Court

NEW DELHI: It was a "sham and premeditated probe" and "a farce prosecution" which led to a son and his wife being wrongly convicted and spending eight years in jail for allegedly killing his old parents and now the Supreme Court acquitted them.

Referring to various loophole in the investigation and trial proceedings which left two innocents languishing in jail, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar K Vinod Chandran cautioned the police and courts to follow accepted practices and procedural rules to the hilt, when lives are lost or taken and when there is a possibility of false accusations being made, putting to peril the reputations of the living.

"Overzealous investigation is as fatal to prosecution as are the lethargic and the tardy. Framing a case on public perceptions and personal predilections ends up in a mess, often putting to peril an innocent and always letting free the perpetrator. Here, we have a case of a gruesome death of a couple when their house was gutted in a fire, with the son and daughter-in-law accused of murder. The entire case is founded on motive; the ill-will the son harbored against the father for not having given him his due share in the ancestral property. The entire village was against the son and the mishap ended in an investigation where truth was sacrificed at the altar of perceived vengeance, ably assisted by the Investigating Officer’s selective but careless pursuits, derailing the entire prosecution," the bench said.



Advocate Smarhar Singh, appearing for the elder brother of the accused, tried to convince the court that his younger brother and his wife were guilty and dying declarations of the dying couple also proved it. But the bench said that dying declarations were not reliable as it was not recorded as per the law.

"The investigation, according to us, was a sham and was premeditated, throwing to the winds every tenet of criminal jurisprudence informed by due procedure. The prosecution, hence, was a farce, parading witnesses whose testimonies fell flat. The investigation and the prosecution was premised on the motive alleged and nothing more," the bench said. It also expressed anguish over proceedings in trial after noting that the trial judge only put four questions to the accused.

"A couple, at the fag end of their lives were burnt to death and the cause, whether it’s a homicide or accidental death, eludes civil society and throws a pall of suspicion on their own son and his family, who will always carry the yoke of dishonour. The son and daughter-in-law were accused of parricide and were convicted by the trial court, later acquitted by the High Court, which acquittal is now affirmed by us. The trauma of arrest, incarceration and trial will always scar the couple and more so their children who were left orphaned, during the time when their parents were imprisoned. We cannot but caution the investigators and the Courts to strive to do better and follow accepted practices and procedural rules to the hilt, when lives are lost or taken and there is a possibility of false accusations being made, putting to peril the reputations of the living," the bench said.
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