Impermissible For High Court To Interfere With Acquittal Unless Trial Court's View Is Perverse Or Impossible : Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (April 2) reiterated that in the event of the possibility of two views, if the trial court acquits the accused, then it would not be permissible for the High Court to interfere with the trial court's order of acquittal unless the view taken by the trial court was perverse.

“In any case, even if two views are possible and the trial Judge found the other view to be more probable, an interference would not have been warranted by the High Court, unless the view taken by the learned trial Judge was a perverse or impossible view.”, the Bench Comprising Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta said.

Reversing the findings of the High Court, the Judgment authored by Justice BR Gavai observed that it would be permissible for the High Court to interfere with the trial court's decision of acquitting the accused only if it comes to the conclusion that the findings of the trial Judge were either perverse or impossible.

“We are compelled to say that the findings of the High Court are totally based on conjectures and surmises. Though the High Court has referred to the law laid down by this Court with regard to the scope of interference in an appeal against acquittal, the High Court has totally misapplied the same and a very well-reasoned judgment based upon the correct appreciation of evidence by the trial Court has been reversed by the High Court, only on the basis of conjectures and surmises.”, the court said.

The aforesaid observation of the Supreme Court came while deciding a criminal appeal preferred by the accused against the decision of the High Court which had reversed the trial court's order of acquittal to conviction.

The accused was acquitted by the trial court based on the material discrepancies found in the evidence placed on record by the prosecution. The trial court noted that the prosecution failed to prove the guilt of the accused/appellant beyond the reasonable doubt.

The Supreme Court while referring to the pieces of evidence led in the trial noted that the findings of the learned trial Judge are based on correct appreciation of the material placed on record, and “the prosecution has failed to prove any of the incriminating circumstances beyond reasonable doubt and in no case, the chain of circumstances, which was so interlinked to each other that leads to no other conclusion, than the guilt of the accused persons.”

Founding that the prosecution case is entirely based on the circumstantial evidence, the court while referring to Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra noted: “that there must be a chain of evidence so complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and must show that in all human probabilities the act must have been done by the accused.”,

“It is settled law that the suspicion, however strong it may be, cannot take the place of proof beyond reasonable doubt. An accused cannot be convicted on the ground of suspicion, no matter how strong it is. An accused is presumed to be innocent unless proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”, the court added.

Based on the above premise, after no perversity or impossibility could be found in the approach adopted by the learned trial Judge, the Supreme Court while reversing the High Court's decision acquitted the accused.

Counsel For Appellant(s) Mr. Varun Thakur,Adv. Mr. Ramkaran,Adv. Ms. Shraddha Saran,Adv. Mr. Brajesh Pandey,Adv. Mr. Varinder Kumar Sharma, AOR

Counsel For Respondent(s) Mr. Pashupathi Nath Razdan, AOR Mr. Vikas Bansal, Adv. Mr. Mirza Kayesh Begg, Adv. Ms. Maitreyee Jagat Joshi, Adv. Mr. Astik Gupta, Adv. Ms. Akanksha Tomar, Adv. Mr. Argha Roy, Adv. Ms. Ojaswini Gupta, Adv. Ms. Ruby, Adv.

Case Title: BALLU @ BALRAM @ BALMUKUND AND ANOTHER VERSUS THE STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH

Citation : 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 271

Click Here To Read/Download The Judgment