Technical Deficiencies Cannot Be Allowed As Loopholes For The Accused To Escape Punishment
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-02-09 10:02:54
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
The Nagpur bench of the Bombay HC has ruled that a murder accused cannot be let off only on the plea that there were irregularities or deficiencies either in the investigation or in the trial or in both if the judicial conscience is satisfied that the crime against the accused is proved beyond reasonable doubt based on admissible evidence on record.
In the instant case, a murder accused convicted by a sessions court in Bhandara had filed a plea for acquittal as according to him the prosecution had failed to produce the murder weapon and the blood-stained clothes of the deceased which were seized after the discovery of the crime. The court relied on detailed description of the crime by several eyewitnesses to conclude that the accused had assaulted the deceased repeatedly with the intension to kill him or knowing full well that his blows were likely to cause the death of the deceased. Hence, the court said that as per law, his crime was proved beyond reasonable doubt and the non-production of the clothes and the murder weapon (which were not received back from the chemical analyzer) was immaterial in this case and could not be a ground for reversing the conviction.
This is a welcome judgment and is in line with a recent Supreme Court ruling in the case State v Laly@ Manikandan which set aside a Madras HC ruling that acquitted three persons accused of murder as the murder weapon was not produced. The Supreme Court had ruled that if eyewitness accounts confirmed the crime beyond reasonable doubt, the accused can be convicted even if the murder weapon was not produced as evidence as it was not a sine qua non for conviction. Higher courts in India are now increasingly recognizing that mere technical errors in investigation and trial cannot be allowed as loopholes for the accused to escape punishment for a crime that is proved beyond reasonable doubt from other admissible evidence on record.
