Courts Must Exercise More Care When Inconsistencies In Oral Evidence Lean Towards Falsely Implicating Innocent Persons: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court acquitted the accused who was charged with an offence of attempt to murder under Section 307 of the Indian Penal Code (“IPC”) since the intention for the crime wasn't established and there were discrepancies in the testimonies.

“it would be apposite to recount the settled proposition of law that a conviction under Section 307 of the IPC may be justified only if the accused in question possessed intent coupled with some overt act in aid of its execution.”, the bench comprising Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta, and Ujjal Bhuyan said.

It was a case where the allegation labeled against the appellants/accused was that they attacked the victims with knives and lathis which resulted in injury being suffered by the victims. The FIR was registered based on the hearsay evidence, and several discrepancies occurred in the injured victim's statements/prosecution witnesses.

The Court doubted the veracity of the witness testimonies and declined to rely on such evidence consequent to the variations in the evidence tendered by prosecution witnesses regarding the sequence of events as they occurred.

“Usually in matters involving criminality, discrepancies are bound to be there in the account given by a witness, especially when there is a conspicuous disparity between the date of the incident and the time of deposition. However, if the discrepancies are such that they create serious doubt on the veracity of a witness, then the Court may deduce and decline to rely on such evidence. This is especially true when there are variations in the evidence tendered by prosecution witnesses regarding the sequence of events as they have occurred. Courts must exercise all the more care and conscientiousness when such oral evidence may lean towards falsely implicating innocent persons.”, the judgment authored by Justice Surya Kant said.

The Court was not convinced by the case of the prosecution as there was no motive attributed to the Appellants, in order to justify their conviction under Section 307 of the IPC.

“Both the injured witnesses, Imran and Mathu, during their cross-examination, clearly explicated that there was no enmity or ill will between them and the accused persons. It is not even the prosecution's case that this was a chance occurrence. It seems that the accused and the alleged victims were familiar with each other and had some kind of association. There is thus more to this than meets the eye, and we are not entirely convinced of the narrative presented and perceived by the prosecution.”, the court observed.

Accordingly, the appeal was allowed and the impugned decision of the High Court convicting the appellants was set aside.

Case Title: Raju and Another versus State of Uttarakhand, CRIMINAL APPEAL NO. 1151 OF 2010

Citation : 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 622

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