On Friday, the Supreme Court has cleared four convicted people of a murder case that had taken place 35 years ago based on major gaps and inconsistencies in the prosecution evidence. Based on the claimed political rivalry, the case had earlier given a life sentence to the accused. The Justices Sanjay Karol and Sandeep Mehta used their plenary powers in the provisions at Article 142 of the Constitutions, to acquit three of the accused, who had not directly challenged their convictions at the apex court.
This was decided in the case of an appeal by one of the convicts against the decision of the Madhya Pradesh High Court of April 2009, which had affirmed the conviction made in the case. In its ruling, the Supreme Court observed that the prosecution could not prove the origin of the incident or even the exact place where the crime was committed.
The Supreme court heard that the evidences of two crucial eyewitnesses were marred with inconsistencies and internal unlikeliness. As the First Information Report (FIR) stated that the accused demolished a hut in the vicinity of the residence of one of the witnesses, another one stated that the events had occurred in the vicinity of his residence, denying it was demolished. Another witness however claimed that the attack had occurred in a field. They fail to recognize the presence of other people at the crime scene. The court opined that such contradictory versions could not exist in any credible story.
These discrepancies, as indicated by the Supreme Court, together with the fact that the origin of the occurrence and the switching of the crime scene was suppressed, undermined the entire premise of the prosecution of the case. In the background, the bench held the conviction of the accused-appellant and the three co-accused, i.e. Govardhan, Raja Ram and Bhima, to be not safe because the testimony of the so-called eyewitnesses is full of contradictions and inherent improbabilities.
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