New Delhi: From forensics done by a botanist to the prosecution not examining the complainant—these are just some of the reasons why the Supreme Court Wednesday acquitted two men accused of raping and murdering a minor girl in 2014 in Uttarakhand.
A three-judge bench of Supreme Court Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol, and Sandeep Mehta has set aside the death penalty awarded to the accused by a Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) court in 2015, and upheld by the Uttarakhand High Court in 2019. The bench said in its Wednesday ruling that “the so-called links” in the chain of circumstances stood broken; thus, the prosecution failed to prove the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Any hasty or mechanical application of the death penalty, without ensuring the highest standards of proof and procedural fairness, not only undermines the rule of law but risks the gravest miscarriage of justice by extinguishing a human life irretrievably,” the bench ruled.
The Uttarakhand POCSO case originated from an incident in November 2014, when a minor girl, who was attending a wedding function in Kathgodam with her family, was kidnapped from the pandal, where she was playing with other kids, raped, and killed. Four days later, a relative called the police, saying he had found the body in the Gaula River.
Noting that the case of prosecution rested on the extra-judicial confession of accused Akhtar Ali, a dumper driver, the court found he was illegally detained—much before his formal arrest—a fact the records confirmed.
Besides Ali, the court acquitted another dumper driver, Prem Pal Verma, sentenced to a seven-year stint in jail in the Uttarakhand POCSO case from 2014, when Verma allegedly was found purchasing toffees and chocolates at a shop near the wedding venue.
Why SC discarded DNA report in POCSO case
The Supreme Court bench rejected the forensic evidence, as the person who conducted the DNA analysis had a degree in botany or studied plants, among other reasons.
“The very qualifications of a witness as a DNA expert are under grave doubt,” it said.
The credentials and qualifications of Dr Manoj Kumar Agarwal, who conducted the DNA tests and issued the DNA report, “are highly doubtful to place him in the category of a DNA expert”, the court said. Agarwal even admitted that he held an MSc degree in Botany and a PhD, but neither equipped him with any expertise in the field of human DNA profiling.
The court also concluded that there was a strong possibility of tampering with forensic samples and planting semen of the accused, Ali, on these samples to establish his involvement in the crime.
Significantly, one of the medical jurists in the Uttarakhand POCSO case said that the cause of death of the victim was excessive bleeding. Given this, the court said the jacket found on her body should have had bloodstains. But instead, the forensic lab report did not indicate any presence of blood or semen of the accused on the jacket.
“In our opinion, the entire process of collection and examination of samples and the consequent matching of the DNA becomes suspicious and wholly unreliable. We are, thus, convinced that the DNA report cannot be treated as a reliable piece of evidence,” the court ruled Wednesday.
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Police failure to interrogate the cousin
Four days after the girl went missing, the police received a call from her relative, her cousin Nikhil Chand. Her body was lying near the river Gaula in the forests in front of Sheeshmahal, Chand informed them.
Based on the lead, a team of police personnel proceeded to the location and found the body, which was subsequently identified and confirmed as that of the missing girl.
However, the court noted a glaring omission in the Uttarakhand POCSO case the prosecution brought before it: the failure to examine the relative, whom the court termed a material witness in the case. During the hearing, the prosecution did not explain the omission of the complainant as a witness.
Taking note of the “grave omission” by the police—its “deliberate exclusion” of a pivotal witness from examination, despite the chance the testimony could confirm or demolish the Uttarakhand POCSO case—the court cast doubts over the fairness of the probe.
Last seen theory & ‘padding’ witnesses
The ‘last seen theory’ is a principle of circumstantial evidence in criminal law under which the person last seen with a victim before their death, presumably, is the perpetrator.
In the Uttarakhand POCSO case, too, the prosecution relied on the last seen theory, saying the accused men were seen in proximity to the victim girl, shortly before she went missing.
The Supreme Court bench examined several witnesses, including the shopkeeper of the nearby tea stall, the owner of the truck the accused drove and another resident of the locality, to ascertain the point made by the prosecution.
Afterwards, the court noted that those witnesses claimed to have seen the accused, but despite that, they had kept quiet until the recovery of her body. They did not even tell her family, the court highlighted.
“Given that, by then, the body of the victim girl had already been recovered, the possibility of these witnesses being a product of subsequent padding…,“ the court said, “…cannot be ruled out.“
It, therefore, pointed out that the credibility of witnesses had diminished. The court further highlighted that one of the witnesses could not even tell whether the accused had been near the missing girl or not.
In its 86-page ruling, the Supreme Court bench described the Uttarakhand POCSO case as one resting on circumstantial or indirect evidence, not the proof of a fact, but giving rise to a logical inference of the existence of that fact.
To establish the guilt of the accused, an unbroken chain of circumstances, driving home the point, is necessary, the bench added.
With that missing in the Uttarakhand POCSO case, the Supreme Court bench opined that the police could not establish any motive on the part of the accused, except that lust drove them, and that too was unsubstantiated.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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