Due Caution Must Be Exercised By Appellate Court Before Reversing Acquittal Orders By Trial Courts: Bombay High Court

In a criminal writ petition filed by the State of Maharashtra against the acquittal order passed by the ad-hoc Additional Sessions Judge, where respondents were charged with offences under Sections 120B, 302, 364 and 201 read with 34 of IPC, a bench of Justice S.S. Shinde and Justice Milind N. Jadhav said,

"the appellate court should generally be loath in disturbing the findings of a trial court especially when the view adopted by the trial court is a possible view."

The bench has further stated that the appellate court should only interfere if the trial court's findings are palpably erroneous or result in injustice.

Background

An FIR was filed by one Shri Krishna Mane who found the body of the deceased in his field. The body was naked and blood was oozing out of the nostrils and Shri Krishna after informing the sarpanch of the same, registered an FIR.

The investigating officer arrested Respondents 1 to 3 after due investigation and postmortem report. The investigating officer recovered the deceased's blood-soaked clothes along with respondent no. 1's blood-soaked clothes from respondent no.1's house. An amount of INR 20,000 was also recovered and all items were sent for chemical analysis.

The case was forwarded to Sessions Court by the Judicial Magistrate under Section 209 of CrPC. Charges were framed against respondents who had denied any complicity in the offence.

Arguments

The Prosecution case before the trial court was that the deceased's daughter was married to respondent no. 2 who used to mistreat her along with his family and the daughter had initiated litigation regarding the same and used to attend hearings with her father. This was the motive behind respondent no. 2's hiring of respondent no.1 through respondent no.3 to kill the deceased.

The Prosecution submitted that this was a criminal conspiracy where respondent no. 2 paid INR 20,000 to respondent no.1 for the contract killing of the deceased.

Respondent no.1 visited the deceased in his house and then took him along on his motorbike to locate an underground water source in the nearby field of Shri Krishna Mane. As soon as the deceased had located the underground water source and was performing Pooja, respondent no. 1 threw chili powder on his face and smashed his head with a stone and killed him. Upon killing him, as per the Prosecution's case, respondent no.1 undressed the deceased to leave no evidence behind and then left his naked dead body in the field which was found two days later by the owner of the field, Shri Krishna mane.

The Prosecution examined all fourteen witnesses in support of his case and no defense witness was produced before the trial court. After hearing arguments from both ends, the trial court acquitted the respondents of all charges and thus, the present appeal has been preferred by the State of Maharashtra against that judgment.

Assistant Public Prosecutor, appearing on behalf of Appellant state submitted that the impugned judgment suffered from infirmities because although the Prosecution's case implicated the respondents in all offences beyond any reasonable doubt, the impugned judgment still acquitted the respondents of all charges.

Per Contra, Counsel for Respondents, Rui Danawala, submitted that not only the entire case is based on circumstantial evidence, but that chain in itself also has not been proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Findings

The High Court first ventured into the question as to whether an appellate court can meddle with the order of the High Court, especially when it's an order of acquittal since it's an established position of law that an order of acquittal by a trial court "only bolsters the presumption of innocence in favour of the accused."

Referring to the Apex Court's judgments in Murlidhar @Gidda v. State of Karnataka, Surajpal Singh v. State, Tulsiram Kanu v. State, Madan Mohan Singh v. State of UP, Atley v. State of UP, Aher Raja Khima v. State of Saurashtra, Balbir Singh v. State of Punjab, Khedu Mohton v. State of Bihar and Chandrappa v. State of Karnataka, among others, the High Court perused through some important principles regarding appellate court's interference in trial court's judgments, which have been enumerated as under:

• There exists a presumption of innocence in favour of the accused and such presumption becomes more substantial through an acquittal order passed by a trial court, in his favour
• The accused is entitled to benefit of reasonable doubt, especially in an appeal against acquittal
• Though the appellate court has extensive powers in appeals against conviction, the same is not the case in appeals against acquittal because the trial court "has had the advantage of seeing the demeanor of witnesses and if the trial court takes a reasonable view, interference by an appellate court is not justified."

The High Court then reappraised itself regarding the prosecution's arguments to see if any unequivocal inference of the guilt of the respondents could be made and checked the contract killing theory, last seen theory and motive theory on those parameters and concluded that none of the theories could be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

The bench stated that it could not be decisively concluded that the respondent had harbored a strong intention to kill the deceased and that the daughter of the deceased had also deposed that neither she, nor her advocate had ever filed any complaint regarding the threats made by respondent no.2.

Thus, in view of the above findings, the bench decided not to interfere with the trial court's judgment and dismissed the criminal appeal with no order to costs.

Case: State of Maharashtra v. Gulab Dattu Patil & Ors.

Citation: 2022 LiveLaw (Bom) 35

Coram: Hon'ble Justice S.S. Shinde and Hon'ble Justice Milind N. Jadhav

Counsel for Appellants: Mr. S.S. Hulke, APP for State

Counsel for Respondents: Ms. Rui Danawala i/by Mr. Umesh Mankapure