Overzealous probe as fatal to prosecution as tardy ones: SC

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 loopholes in the investigation and trial proceedings which left two innocents languishing in jail, a bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar K Vinod Chandran cautioned police and courts to follow accepted 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 harboured 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.
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