Twice in a month, MP high court criticises prosecution for 'intellectual dishonesty' in withholding evidence

BHOPAL/JABALPUR: The MP high court, in two separate cases from Panna district in Madhya Pradesh in less than a month, criticised the prosecution for "intellectual dishonesty" for withholding crucial evidence from the court to secure conviction of the accused.

In a case involving the death of a married woman, in which her husband was charged with culpable homicide and dowry harassment, the prosecution did not produce in court the "dying declaration" of the deceased recorded by a naib tehsildar. In that declaration, the woman said she sustained burns when tea fell on her and nobody was responsible for the incident. The accused husband was acquitted by the trial court, and the state govt went in appeal against the acquittal of the accused Prakash Vishwas.

In its order on Jan 15, 2026, the division bench of Justice Vivek Agarwal and Justice Ramkumar Chaube said, "We are dismayed after perusal of the record how intellectually dishonest prosecution can be. This is a case where it is evident from record that the prosecution is full of intellectual dishonesty. We say so on the basis of the dying declaration of deceased Kavita Vishwas. The dying declaration was admittedly recorded by Deepa Chaturvedi, naib tahsildar, who at the relevant point of time was posted at Panna. In our opinion, the onus was on the prosecution to have brought contradictions on record to prove their case but the prosecution was dishonest in not producing the dying declaration recorded by the naib tahsildar, who happens to be a govt official."

In another case, the wife of a person and her alleged paramour were charged with the murder of the woman’s husband by offering him water mixed with pesticide. The accused were sentenced to life imprisonment by the sessions court, and the male accused Raju Kushwaha went to court for suspension of sentence and bail.

The court noted that, according to documents of the case, an FSL scientific officer reached the site from where the skeleton of the deceased was recovered at the same time of the day with the investigating officer, when he was recording statements of the accused at Amanganj police station in Panna on the scene of crime and how it was carried out. The prosecution did not produce the scene of crime report of the FSL scientific officer before the court, and it was presented by the defence.

The court said the investigating officer could not have been present at both places, and held that statements of the accused were "fictitious". It also criticised the investigating officer for creating "fictitious" evidence in the form of documents related to statements of the accused, and said the DGP, Madhya Pradesh, may institute a departmental inquiry against him if he was still in job.