New Delhi: After an acquittal and then a conviction, the Supreme Court finally acquitted three men embroiled in a murder case dating back to 1997 Monday.
The three men — Mallappa, Hanamanth, and Dharamanna — had filed an appeal before the court in the murder case of one Marthandappa.
A trial court had acquitted the trio back in March 2005, but the Karnataka High Court reserved the acquittal in May 2010 and sentenced them to life imprisonment for murder. During the pendency of their appeal in the apex court, Dharamanna passed away.
A bench of Justice Bela M. Trivedi and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma finally acquitted the trio on 12 February.
The victim, Marthandappa, allegedly had an “illicit relationship” with Dharamanna’s wife, Nagamma.
On 28 June, 1997, eight people allegedly attacked Marthandappa at 4 pm with axes, knives and clubs. Marthandappa, along with his two nephews, was travelling in a bullock cart from Aidbhavi village to Nagaral village. The nephews later appeared as witnesses in the case.
The eyewitness accounts of the two led to a difference of opinion between the trial court and the high court. The Supreme Court, however, upheld the trial court’s judgment, saying it could not agree with the findings of the high court.
Its 36-page judgment began with the line, “The wheels of justice may grind slow, but they grind fine.” The apex court asserted that an acquittal can be reserved only on “illegality or perversity” and not “on a mere difference of opinion” between the two courts. It concluded that the high court “erred in reversing the decision of acquittal, without arriving at any finding of illegality or perversity or error in the reasoning of the trial court”.
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Witness account ‘not worthy of credit’: Trial court
The case chargesheet, filed in September 1997, named eight accused, five brothers and their three relatives.
In its judgment acquitting all the accused, the trial court said the evidence of an eyewitness, present with the victim in the bullock cart, was “not worthy of credit” as he, scared, hid behind the bushes till sunset despite the assailants leaving after the other eyewitness received injuries in the attack. He left for Devpura the next day, and after that, he reached the victim’s house in Aidbhavi village, where he informed the victim’s father about the incident.
The trial court noted this eyewitness accepted several buses ran on the route, but he chose to catch the bus to Devpura village at 6 am the next morning. The court found this version “artificial”, and said he could have availed a bus on the same day after the attackers left.
The trial court also raised other doubts, like he did not inform the people at Devpura or the bus passengers about the attack. The incident took place around 4 pm and it took him more than 18 hours to inform the victim’s father, it noted.
Also, although he had an opportunity, he did not approach the police outpost, which lies on his way from Devpura to Aidbhavi, about the attack, the court said.
The court further noted he did not make “any sincere effort” to get the other eyewitness treated. It also observed the attackers had “no reason” not to assault him.
“His version that he escaped and hid behind the bushes is artificial,” the court observed.
Injured eyewitness account natural: HC
The high court, however, held that the postmortem of the victim supported the prosecution’s case that Marthandappa’s death was homicidal.
On the question of the credibility of the two eyewitnesses, the high court felt that the evidence of the injured eyewitness “is quite natural and there is nothing to disbelieve his veracity”.
On the credibility of the testimony of the other eyewitness who hid behind the bushes, the high court felt that he certainly had options to inform the police or others on his way but went to the victim’s father “as he was the most appropriate person to be informed about the incident”.
‘Fails to inspire confidence’
The Supreme Court, in its judgment, at the outset said the “presumption of innocence gets concretised when the case ends in acquittal”. So, in an appeal against an acquittal, it said, the presumption gets strengthened and a higher threshold is expected to rebut the presumption.
On the evidence of the two witnesses, the court noted that the statement of the eyewitness who hid in the bushes for the entire night while Marthandappa lay dead and the other eyewitness lay severely injured “fails to inspire confidence”. That he “did not even contemplate providing medical help” to the injured or “to seek protection from the local police despite such a drastic assault and instead, chose to wait for 18 hours, raises reasonable doubt on the credibility of his version”, observed the Supreme Court. The court felt that the conduct “renders his very presence at the place of incident as doubtful”. It also noted that despite a heavy assault by multiple persons, he did not suffer any injury at all.
As for the injured eyewitness, the court felt that the nature of his injuries did not match his version of events.
HC’s omissions noted in judgment
The Supreme Court noted that the high court did not take note of two material aspects: the injured eyewitness recorded his statement a month after the incident, and the family relationship between him and the victim.
The apex court opined that the trial court “reached its decision after a thorough appreciation of evidence”. It then opined that the high court went on to reverse the decision by taking its view on a fresh appreciation of evidence and did so “without recording any illegality, error of law or fact in the decision of the trial court”. The Supreme Court felt that it was not permissible for the high court to do so.
“Setting aside an order of acquittal, which signifies a stronger presumption of innocence, on a mere change of opinion is not permissible. A low standard for turning an acquittal into conviction would be fraught with the danger of failure of justice,” it observed.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)