Allahabad High Court Acquits Murder Convict Who Spent Over 7.5 Yrs In Jail, Grants ₹1 Lakh To Him As Compensation
Sparsh Upadhyay
19 Sep 2024 7:43 AM GMT
The Allahabad High Court last week acquitted one Hafeez Khan, who had been convicted by the Sessions Court in March 2019 in a murder case of a woman, as it noted that there was absolutely no evidence against him.
The Court also granted him Rs. 1 Lakh as a 'token of compensation' for the 'injustice' done to him since he had to spend more than 7.5 years in jail.
“Now that this Court has found that there was absolutely no evidence against him, it is a fit case for awarding costs of litigation as also to order payment of compensation for the confinement of the appellant for a period exceeding 7½ years without any evidence to prove his guilt cannot be fully compensated in terms of money but as a token of compensation for the injustice done to the appellant, we order that the State shall pay Rs.1,00,000/- to the appellant towards compensation for the period spent by him in custody,” a bench of Justice Attau Rahman Masoodi and Justice Subhash Vidyarthi observed in its 22-page judgment.
In its judgment and order dated March 27, 2019, the trial Court held that the appellant had killed one Sayra Bano and had hidden the dead body in the grave. He was convicted for offences under Sections 302 and 201 IPC and was sentenced to undergo simple imprisonment for life and pay Rs.50,000/- as a fine.
However, the division bench, in its analysis of the trial court's judgment, as well as the evidence put on record, noted that the prosecution had not taken any steps to ascertain the identity of the dead body (alleged to be of the wife of the appellant) by any scientific evidence.
The Court observed that though, as per the inquest and post-marten reports, some clothes, a thread and a tabeez were present on the alleged dead body of the deceased; however, the prosecution remained silent about those articles and no question was put to any witness about those articles to connect the same with the deceased to identify the dead body.
Thus, the Court concluded that there was no evidence to prove that Sayra Bano had been killed and the dead body was of Sayra Bano.
“In these circumstances, the only irresistible conclusion that we can draw is that the trial Court has concluded that the appellant killed Sayra Bano by assaulting her on her neck with knife and he had hidden the dead body in the grave of Kennoo Khan, without there being any evidence to support this conclusion and, therefore, this conclusion is perverse,” the Court observed.
Further, the Court also found faults with the trial court's conclusion that the weapon was recovered from the appellant's house based on his indication and thus, he was the author of the crime.
The Court noted that while the informant and her sister witnessed the alleged recovery of the weapon and some police officers, only the S.H.O. (PW8) testified about it. The Court further observed that though the Forensic Science Laboratory report confirmed the presence of blood on the knife, its group could not be identified.
Therefore, the Court noted, it cannot be established that the blood on the weapon was actually of the deceased, and there was absolutely no evidence linking the knife to the crime, making the trial court's conclusion baseless.
The division bench also noted that the trial court had relied on certain Supreme Court judgments to conclude that the accused could be held guilty and convicted even if the prosecution witnesses had turned hostile.
However, upon analysing the ratio of those judgments, the High Court found that none were based on facts similar to the present case, where the prosecution failed to provide evidence to establish the appellant's guilt.
In view of this, the High Court set aside the judgment and order passed by the trial Court as being unsustainable in law and acquitted the accused who had been in jail since January 15, 2017.
Case title - Hafeez Khan vs. State Of U.P. 2024 LiveLaw (AB) 584
Case citation : 2024 LiveLaw (AB) 584
