NEW DELHI: In a scathing indictment of the criminal justice system, the Supreme Court has acquitted a man who had spent 11 years behind bars and was sentenced to death for allegedly murdering six members of his family, including three children, in Phagwara, Punjab, in 2014.
The top court criticised the lower courts and prosecution for sending the man to the gallows without credible evidence. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol, and Sandeep Mehta said the conviction was based on contradictory witness statements and flawed assumptions.
“The breakdown of the legal system becomes apparent when such haste to lay a finger of blame on somebody leads to a shoddy investigation and a poorly conducted trial. The result is a loosely tied prosecution case with glaring loopholes all across and yet the courts’ enthusiasm to deliver justice in such a heinous crime ensures that the accused person ends up on the death row, albeit without sufficient evidence. This is precisely the misery which the instant case entails,” the bench observed.
While the trial court and the Punjab and Haryana High Court had both upheld the death sentence, the apex court found the testimonies of the key eyewitnesses to be inconsistent and unreliable.
“The internal inconsistencies and lack of corroboration cast serious doubts and snatch away the degree of accuracy that is to be attained while determining the culpability of an accused in cases of murder. We cannot turn a blind eye to the obvious inconsistencies in the depositions of its main witnesses which indicate deliberate embellishment and coaching, rendering these testimonies unreliable. Therefore, we have no hesitation to hold that no credence can be lent to the testimonies of PW1 and PW2 and their account of being ‘eyewitness’ to the incident or having seen the accused has to be discarded,” the court said.
The trial court had ruled out the possibility of dacoity or involvement of unknown assailants due to the brutal nature of the crime. However, the Supreme Court disagreed, stating that “merely lack of an alternative plausible explanation to the incident cannot serve as enough evidence in itself to send a man to the gallows, whose guilt otherwise remains unestablished.”
Emphasising the importance of rigorous proof in capital cases, the bench concluded:
“At the cost of repetition, we must state that the standard of proof is an absolutely strict one and cannot be faltered with. When at stake are human lives and the cost is blood, the matter needs to be dealt with utmost sincerity. Therefore, given the facts and circumstances of the case and in light of the above discussion, we cannot bring ourselves to hold the accused-appellant guilty of the charged offence as his guilt has not been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The man, whose life had hung in the balance for over a decade, now walks free—vindicated, but after years lost to a miscarriage of justice.
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