New Delhi: In a case pending for more than four decades, the Allahabad High Court Wednesday acquitted a 100-year-old murder accused. The court ruled for his acquittal, citing gaping holes and contradictions in the prosecution’s case as well as its eventual failure to establish the accused’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Accused of a 1982 murder involving a land dispute, Dhani Ram was in his 50s when he was arrested and, subsequently, spent some years in jail before he was released on bail.
A Hamirpur trial court found him guilty in July 2024, but he filed a challenge to this verdict that has remained stuck in the legal system for more than 40 years.
The high court, on 4 February, finally settled the matter, emphasising, “It is not in dispute that the appellant is now of extremely advanced age, stated to be about 100 years old.
”A division bench of justices Chandra Dhari Singh and Sanjiv Kumar said the prolonged pendency of the criminal proceedings, along with Dhani Ram’s advanced age and long periods of freedom on bail, prompted “relevant and weighty” considerations on their end, after which they decided in favour of relief for the accused.
The court opined that prolonging the custodial consequences for the elderly man would serve no useful purpose.
Pointing to significant inconsistencies between the medical evidence and the ocular evidence—essentially what’s witnessed by a person present during a crime, more commonly known as eyewitness evidence—the court exonerated Dhani Ram.
“Where guilt itself is not established beyond a reasonable doubt, and the accused has survived under the weight of the accusation for four decades, the only outcome consistent with justice, fairness, and human dignity is complete exoneration, with a conscious recognition that prolonged pendency and extreme age further militate against any residual penal consequence,” the bench said.
Speaking to ThePrint, Dhani Ram’s lawyer Ramesh Prajapati welcomed the judgment while saying that the accused had had been out on bail for quite some years now.
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The murder case
The case dates back to August 1982. A man, called Raja Bhaiya, sent a written report to the Maudaha Police Station, saying that he and his elder brother were returning home after fetching water from a pond, when his brother was shot at by the accused, including Dhani Ram.
One of the accused was allegedly armed with a spear, while another had an axe. His complaint added that the men exhorted him to kill his brother, owing to past animosity between the two parties. His brother had allegedly taken over their six bighas, worth roughly 3.72 acres.
While Raja screamed, several locals rushed towards the spot, and the accused ran away. At the site, an empty cartridge had later been found, leading to a criminal case against the men, including Dhani Ram. Under the investigation that ensued, blood-soaked pellets and blood-stained soil were found at the spot. Forensics collected what they needed. The body was sent for a postmortem.
Although the accused, including Dhani Ram, pleaded not guilty before the trial court in 1984, the court convicted all of them of murder, taking into account eyewitness testimonies and other evidence in the case. The court sentenced all to life imprisonment.
Allahabad High Court ruling
After looking at the evidence—especially eyewitness accounts—“carefully” and “with due caution”—the high court found that their testimonies did not inspire confidence to sustain the conviction.
Accepting these testimonies as the “gospel truth”, without testing them on the anvil of settled legal principles, had resulted in a grave nuisance of justice, the high court noted, while adding that the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Relying on the 2025 Supreme Court ruling in the state of Madhya Pradesh vs Shyamlal matter, where the court dealt with an 1989 incident—where the accused was nearly eighty years old—converting his murder conviction to culpable homicide, not amounting to murder, the Allahabad court said “the fact that the appeal was being considered after more than three decades and that the accused had remained on bail during the pendency of the proceedings” were among the factors that the SC had then taken into consideration.
On Wednesday, the Allahabad court noted that Dhani Ram, according to the charge sheet, was already more than 94 years of age when his appeal was first considered.
He “faced the agony of investigation, trial and appeal for over twenty-five years and had already undergone more than six years of actual incarceration, with total custody including remissions exceeding eleven years,” the court noted, reducing his sentence to what has already been served.
“When the system itself has been unable to deliver finality within a reasonable time, courts are justified in adopting a tempered, human approach while fashioning relief,” the court said, acquitting Dhani Ram.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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