New Delhi: Observing that “an inept investigation or a scripted inquiry” is fatal to criminal prosecution, the Supreme Court slammed the Assam Police over its probe in a 2008 murder case, and acquitted 12 people convicted by the trial court.
A two-judge bench of justices Sanjay Kumar and K. Vinod Chandran was hearing an appeal by convicts in the murder case. The alleged incident happened 8 July 2008 in Assam’s Goalpara district.
According to the case detail, a man named Abdul Wahab, was travelling with others on motorcycles when they were ambushed. The accused allegedly threw chilli powder in Wahab’s eyes and fatally attacked him. He died on the spot.
“An inept investigation or a scripted inquiry, both are fatal to criminal prosecution; but the latter has lethal consequences when there is a possibility of totally innocent persons being crucified,” the judgment authored by Justice Chandran stated.
The Assam Police chargesheeted 16 people, including the petitioner Sadek Ali. Out of the accused one died during the pendency of the trial.
Among the remaining 15, 12 were convicted by the trial court for offences such as rioting, murder, attempt to murder, voluntarily causing hurt or grievous hurt with dangerous weapons and wrongful restraint.The trial court had examined 18 witnesses.
The conviction was upheld by the Gauhati High Court in March 2021.
The High Court noted that the witnesses were examined right after the incident, and not taking their evidence into account would send a “wrong message”. In doing so, the HC had rejected the accused’s argument about the FIR being filed after some delay.
Unreliable eyewitnesses & other loopholes
Sadek and other accused moved the Supreme Court against their conviction, and argued that on the day of the incident police did make a diary entry and visited the incident site “immediately”, but a formal FIR was registered only three days later.
The eyewitnesses were also wholly unreliable, the accused argued, while pointing out that there were inconsistencies among them in their own narration of the incident.
The injuries were also inconsistent with the post-mortem report, the accused argued while pointing out that no weapons were ever recovered from them or sent for forensic analysis. Some of the “so-called injured eyewitnesses” who had testified in favour of the prosecution also could not furnish any proof of their injuries, the accused told the court.
On the other hand, the Assam government argued that there were five eyewitnesses based on whose testimonies, the subordinate courts had confirmed the conviction. It said that these witnesses had remained unshaken in their cross-examination, and had to flee from the site of the incident due to fear for their own lives.
The prosecution also argued that the postmortem report in this case revealed that the death of Wahab was caused by injury inflicted by “sharp-cutting weapons”, from different directions and some of these injuries were bone deep, and impacted his vital organs like brain and lungs.
What SC ruled
The SC noted that although the police reached the spot immediately after the alleged assault, where the man was killed while two others were grievously injured, they failed to collect blood which was spilt at the place of the incident.
“We pause here to notice that despite the police having reached the spot immediately after the assault in which allegedly one person was killed and two others injured grievously, no attempt was made to collect the blood spilled,” the court noted in its 28 April ruling.
The court also said there was no proof of the injuries that the eyewitnesses said they suffered.
The credibility of an injured eyewitness is higher than an ordinary eyewitness who has simply seen the incident, but in the present case, the prosecution failed to prove the injuries suffered by the eyewitness happened in the same incident, said the court.
Their presence is “highly improbable” on account of no evidence being there to substantiate their stories, the court said.
The court also observed that six eyewitnesses were said to be on motorbikes at the place of the incident, but the Investigative Officer did not record any of their or their vehicle’s details.
These motorbikes were also not placed before the court, the judges said.
“The very story of six people having proceeded on four bikes stand effaced by reason of no worthy evidence having been produced to substantiate the same: putting the eyewitnesses’ testimonies under grave suspicion,” the court ruled in its order.
On top of that, no FIR was registered for two whole days, despite the police claiming to reach the spot immediately, the court said, adding that the weapons allegedly seized by the police were never sent for forensic analysis either.
It was rather “unfortunate”, said the court, that the police officers claimed to reach the spot immediately, but still failed to follow the due procedure required to put a criminal investigation in motion under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973.
“Be it ignorance, inefficiency or malicious motivation, the crime is left unresolved and considerable time and money have been spent”.
This money was spent prosecuting the sixteen accused people, some of which died during the trial while others suffered due to being incarcerated for long periods, the court noted, while advising the Assam government and its home department to better equip their officers in investigating crime and the rigours of due procedure.
Finally, the court acquitted the accused in the present case.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
Also Read: Assam Police faces heat as woman constable seen with infant on poll duty—‘crèche mandatory’