Benefit of doubt: Delhi High Court acquits five men accused of molesting and murdering woman

The Delhi High Court has set aside an order of the lower court convicting five men of molesting and then murdering a woman..A Division Bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Anup Jairam Bhambhani noted that there are several material contradictions in the prosecution’s case and such contradictions must enure to the benefit of the accused.The judge, therefore, said that they are persuaded to grant the appellants the benefit of doubt in this case.“…if two views are possible on the evidence adduced in a case, the view favouring the innocence of the accused should be adopted, in our opinion, in this case there are clearly two views that are possible in light of the several material contradictions in the prosecution’s case… Such contradictions must enure to the benefit of the accused and we are therefore persuaded to accept the view favourable to the accused persons,” the judges said..The High Court was dealing with an appeal filed by five men – Mantoo Sharma, Beerpal, Mohammed Nassem, Naresh and Jaipal – challenging the trial court order convicting them of molesting a woman and then killing her.The incident had happened in March 2014 and they were convicted on August 26, 2019..The High Court said that the discrepancies alone between the statement given by prosecution’s star witness – a ragpicker named Monu – under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and Section 164 CrPC does not persuade it to discard the testimony.However, the star witness had also corrected himself to say that he was not a witness but a ‘secret informer’, the Court noted. It further observed that despite allegedly witnessing the crime himself, he did not inform the PCR or any police official or any other person about the incident on the day of the crime.Monu had also accepted that on the day of the incident there had been a verbal altercation between him and the accused and they were made to sit in the police station for five to six days."This, in our view, gives rise to a serious possibility of false implications. No evidence is led as to the verbal altercation, which PW-1 (Monu) admits to. No evidence is led as to the detention of PW-1 and the accused persons in the police station for several days, to which PW-1 deposes. This creates doubt in our minds as to the credibility of PW-1 as an eyewitness,” the Court said..The court noted that the actual time of death of the victim was also shrouded in mystery as there were some errors in but even then the time of death is stated to be between 2:15 am and 3:15 am. It added that this timing also contradicts Monu’s testimony that he saw the accused men assault the victim from around 8:00 pm for about two-and-half hours the previous night."This discrepancy casts more than a shadow of doubt as to the very presence of PW-1 at the crime scene at the relevant time. When we say this, we also remind ourselves of PW-1’s statements that PW-1 was a 'secret informer'; and PW-1's own statement that there had been a verbal altercation between him and the accused persons on March 29, 2014,” the Court said. .It was also found that though there were allegations that the accused hit the victim on head with beer bottles and pieces of brick and stone however no bottle or shards of glass were recovered from the crime scene, nor were there any traces of alcohol in the victim's body.“Absent any evidence in this behalf, the allegations regarding purchase of liquor, administering liquor to the victim and hitting her on the head with a beer bottle, also appear to be embellishments. We find ourselves unable to ignore these embellishments, if only because they are elements of fabrication of evidence on the part of PW-1.”The judges further held,“On the touchstone of the cardinal principle of criminal jurisprudence that ‘contradictions’ in testimony are not acceptable, though ‘discrepancies’ may be, in view of what is observed above, we are not persuaded to accept PW-1’s testimony as being truthful.”.The court further said that though the incident happened on March 28/29, 2014, four of the accused were arrested on April 4, 2014 while the fifth person was arrested on May 6, 2014.Prosecution had claimed that on the day of the arrest, four of the accused were wearing blood-stained clothes.The judges noted that this circumstance that “strains credulity” and in any case, the forensic analysis of the blood found on the clothes only showed that it was of human origin.The test was inconclusive regarding rhesus factor and no DNA test was conducted to establish any connection with the blood group of the deceased, court said..All the appeals were, therefore, allowed and the judgment of conviction and sentencing order by the trial court was set aside. The Court directed that the appellants be released from custody. .Senior Advocate Maninder Singh along with advocates Sumer Kumar Sethi, Aekta Vats, Anshika Batra, Aishwarya Rao, Mansi Rao, Harsh Prabhakar, Anirudh Tanwar, Harjeet Singh Sachdeva, Dhruv Chaudhry, Shikha Garg, Jay Kumar Bharadwaj, Sumeet Verma and Mahinder Pratap Singh appeared for appellants.Additional Public Prosecutor Ashish Dutta appeared for State..[Read Judgment]