Bombay High Court acquits death row prisoner who was convicted by trial court for murdering couple by pouring acid

A man who was convicted and sentenced to death by the trial court for murder of a couple by pouring acid over them, was acquitted by the Bombay High Court on Friday on the ground that the evidence against him was filled with inconsistencies [The State of Maharashtra v. Guddu Krish Yadav].A Bench of Justices SS Jadhav and Milind Jadhav observed that trial was conducted in the most casual manner and the evidence filled with inconsistency to even convict the accused.“Whether the trial was just and fair in a capital punishment case is a question remaining unanswered. The quality and credibility of the evidence adduced is not even upto the mark as observed by us. The evidence led by the prosecution is fraught with major inconsistencies” the High Court said. The bench made it clear that there is absolutely no question of awarding death penalty. "There is absolutely no question of awarding death sentence to the accused, rather, it is the case wherein the accused must be given the benefit of doubt, nay, it would be a travesty of justice,” the 77-page order stated..There is absolutely no question of awarding death sentence to the accused.Bombay High Court .The division bench gave the verdict in an application moved by the State of Maharashtra seeking confirmation of death sentence handed down to one Guddu Yadav for committing double murder by pouring acid on the victims..The facts as per the prosecution were that the two victims, husband and wife, worked at a chemicals and acid trading company and resided with their family in one of the rooms in the company premises. Two other employees also slept in the company office. One night, the applicant accused doused the two victims with sulphuric acid while they were asleep and ran away.The victims were taken to the hospital, where the husband died four hours after he was brought in and the wife died the next day.The evidence of the prosecution relied upon the dying declarations of the husband and wife and the two employees who were prime eye witnesses to the incident..The High Court noted that the conviction order by the Additional Sessions Judge at Palghar depended entirely on the reliability of the dying declarations, as the oral dying declarations heard by the two employees matched the written dying declarations recorded.The trial court convicted the accused and sentenced him to death observing that the case in hand is a rarest of rare case beyond imagination and a crime of such a nature does not deserve sympathy or mercy..After going through the evidence the Court came to two conclusions regarding the dying declarations:for the husband, the Court observed that a person with 96% burn injuries due to deep chemical burns (acid) in the first place would not be in any position to talk and / or give a detailed dying declaration as in the present case, which indicated that the same was fabricated evidence.for the wife, the court relied upon another witness who stated that she was brought in dead, hence it would have been impossible to record her declaration the next day.Further the court noted that instead of registering FIR based on statements of the two employee witnesses, the police waited for the dying declaration to be recorded before recording FIR, which showed that the identity of the assailant was unknown.The Court also noted that the prosecution had not been able to give a valid explanation on why they did not examine the three children belonging to the deceased as witnesses, which showed the prosecution’s lack of bonafides..Holding that the sessions court order was not justified in convicting the accused, the order was quashed and set aside and the accused was directed to be set at liberty in case he was in custody forthwith.“Merely because the crime is heinous and brutal, it would not be just to get carried away sans any legal proof required to substantiate the charge of murder on the accused,” the Bench highlighted in the order..[Read Judgment]