Supreme Court Delivers Split Verdict On Police Officers' Convictions In Decades-Old Custodial Death Case

The Supreme Court has delivered a split verdict in an appeal by police officers convicted of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and other offences in a decades-old custodial death case for alleged torture and death of a man in police custody in December 1995.

A bench of Justice CT Ravikumar and Justice Sanjay Kumar delivered a split verdict, particularly on the issue of conviction of the accused under section 304 Part II IPC. The two judges disagreed on the following aspect, as explained by Justice Kumar –

“This is the major point of divergence between our views. My learned brother has acted upon the premise that once the dead body is said to have been traced and it is, then, not proved to be of that person, it would be fatal to the case of the prosecution. Permitting this premise to gain acceptance would mean that those in the police organization, who resort to such nefarious methods, can take this easy way out to ward off a finding of guilt. When sufficient evidence is available to conclude that Shama was in no position to escape from the custody of the appellants, the inevitable corollary that follows is that he died due to their torture while in their custody.”

While Justice Ravikumar set aside the convictions under section 304 IPC, Justice Kumar acquitted them.

“It is high time that our legal system squarely faces the menace of police excesses and deals with it by putting in place an effective mechanism to obviate such inhuman practices”, Justice Kumar added.

Justice Ravikumar emphasised that the prosecution must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and cannot rely on the weakness of the defence's arguments. He noted that the burden on the defence to prove an alternate theory (such as escape of the deceased) is not as stringent as that on the prosecution, but only requires a preponderance of probabilities.

“There can be little doubt with respect to the position that a Court is not justified in deciding a case upon its own suspicions or suppositions after discarding the evidence adduced by Criminal the parties and that defence evidence is also to be appreciated in the same manner as it is to appreciate the prosecution evidence, but with the understanding that in the case of accused the standard of proof required is only preponderance of probabilities”, he said.

“In Noor Aga's case, this Court observed and held that superficially a case might have an ugly look and thereby, prima facie, shaking the conscious of any court. But it is well settled that suspicion, however high it might be, could under no circumstances be held to be substitute for legal evidence”, he highlighted.

Facts

One Shama@Kalya was taken into police custody in connection with a burglary. He was allegedly detained without a formal arrest and subjected to third-degree torture. Shama's family claimed that he was beaten by the police, leading to his death. To cover up the death, the accused police officers allegedly created false records and staged an escape story. The body of a burnt man, believed to be Shama, was found buried in a forest on December 31, 1995.

The trial court found the police officials guilty under various sections of the IPC, including Sections 304 Part II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 330 (voluntarily causing hurt to extort a confession), (wrongful confinement), and (extortion) but acquitted them of murder charges under Section 302 IPC.

The Bombay High Court partially upheld the conviction but acquitted the officers of the charge of destroying evidence (Section 201 IPC) related to the burning of Shama's body, as it found the fingerprint evidence inconclusive. Thus, the convicts filed the present appeals before the Supreme Court. The case involved a total of seven convicts. Accused no. 2 and 4 were convicted under section 304 IPC by the HC.

Justice CT Ravikumar's opinion

Justice Ravikumar held that the appeal filed by the accused no. 1 stood abated citing his subsequent death.

Justice CT Ravikumar upheld the conviction of accused nos. 2 to 5 under Sections 330, 348, and 387. He ruled that the evidence against the accused was sufficient to maintain their conviction for custodial torture. However, he acquitted all the accused of all other charges, including Section 304 Part II IPC, citing insufficient proof linking the injuries to Shama's death. The highlighted that despite the High Court's reversal of key findings that weakened the prosecution's case regarding custodial death, neither the State nor any relatives of the victim filed an appeal against the High Court's judgment.

Despite the prosecution's reliance on a fingerprint test to identify the burned body as Shama's, the HC had rejected this evidence, noting that the test was based on guesswork rather than scientific certainty. Justice Ravikumar opined that without conclusive identification of the body, the conviction for culpable homicide could not be sustained.

Justice Ravikumar stated that while a conviction for homicide does not require the dead body to be found if there is reliable direct or circumstantial evidence, if the prosecution claims to have recovered the body, it must prove that the body is of the person allegedly killed by the accused.

“Once the dead body is traced and subjected to autopsy and necrotomic and other evidences are adduced to bring out the cause of death, failure to prove that the dead body is of that very person allegedly done to death by the very accused, must have fatal and adverse consequence on the prosecution case. As noted earlier, a case that dead body is untraceable and a case where it is traced and evidence is adduced in a bid to prove the identity of the deceased are different and distinct. In the latter case, upon failure to prove, the prosecution cannot be permitted to advance a case that the dead body is untraceable”, he said.

“when once identification of the dead body as that of Shama @ Kalya based on fingerprint test is reversed by the High Court, in the absence of appeal by the State or the victim, it could not be said that the dead body is that of Shama @ Kalya, either for holding the appellant-convicts guilty of the offence under Section 300, IPC punishable under Section 302, IPC, or under Part -I / Part-II of Section 304, IPC”, he held.

Shama's wife testified that Shama was tortured in custody, and that he had told her the police cut the veins in his legs.

Justice Ravikumar observed that the body recovered and subjected to postmortem was not identified as Shama's, and no antemortem injuries were found on it. Additionally, there were material omissions in his wife's testimony which she couldn't explain. The trial court had no justification for concluding that Shama's leg veins were cut, leading to his death, he said.

The appellant-convicts argued that Shama had escaped from custody, contending that he was later arrested by Railway Police for traveling without a ticket, fined, and prosecuted, presenting this as evidence that Shama's escape was real and he was alive after his supposed death. This was to counter the prosecution's claim that the alleged escape was a staged drama to cover up his custodial death.

Justice Ravikumar held that the trial court's rejection of this evidence was based on conjectures and failed to properly consider its potential significance under the standard of preponderance of probabilities.

On the issue of the destruction of Shama's body, Justice Ravikumar upheld the HC's finding that the prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the body found was indeed Shama's, which was necessary to sustain the charge under Section 201 IPC.

Justice Sanjay Kumar

Justice Sanjay Kumar agreed with Justice Ravikumar's opinion and the Trial Court and High Court's findings that the appellants were responsible for custodial torture.

However, he disagreed with Justice Ravikumar on the aspect of charge of culpable homicide. He noted that there is no record to support the claim that appeal by accused no.1 stands abated due to his death, and thus assumed the appeal remains active for consideration.

Justice Kumar highlighted that the appellants are police officers accused of abuse of their powers, in resorting to custodial torture, and tampering with evidence. He criticised the state for not filing appeal against acquittal of the appellant from the murder charge.

“This failure on the part of the State is, in itself, a cause for concern as this was a case of police brutality and use of third-degree methods, which ought to have prompted the State to take a more rigorous stand so as to set an example and instill discipline in its police machinery. However, the State of Maharashtra did not deem it appropriate to do so. Be that as it may.”

He said that the evidence presented, particularly regarding Shama's death, was not properly appreciated.

Justice Kumar disagreed with the dismissal of the fingerprint evidence, asserting that the trial court had correctly accepted it as reliable. He also criticized the prosecution for failing to conduct a DNA test, which could have definitively proven the identity of the body. In his view, the failure to conclusively establish the identity of the body should not have led to the acquittal of the accused under Section 304 Part II IPC.

Justice Kumar considered the appellants' defence that Shama escaped from custody and was later convicted by the Railway Court fabricated, and that it cannot be allowed to “dupe” the court. He emphasized that Shama's physical condition after the torture would have made it impossible for him to flee. It is unlikely he could have physically escaped by jumping from a moving jeep in a crowded residential area as claimed by the defence, he said.

The appellants claimed that Shama, after escaping, was convicted by a Railway Court for traveling without a ticket. Justice Kumar rejected this argument as highly implausible, noting that it would be far-fetched to believe that a fugitive would choose to appear before a court and pay a fine for such a minor offense, instead of remaining in hiding.

“In the present case, the appellants cleverly concocted the story of Shama escaping from their custody and created a record to buttress it. Not content therewith, the appellants also cooked up what is clearly a fabricated saga of Shama surfacing in Raipur and being convicted by the Railway Court there, on 07.01.1996, for travelling without a ticket. Even if it is assumed for a second that the police version of Shama's escape is true, it would require another huge leap of faith to believe that Shama, a fugitive from the law, would have willfully refused to ₹ pay 50/-, while caught travelling ticketless between Gondia and Raipur, and would have preferred to go before the Railway Court to suffer and document a conviction, whereby he had to pay 200/- as fine. This ₹ convenient story was apparently devised for the purpose of creating a record of Shama being alive on that date.”

The judge noted that the prosecution did not gather sufficient evidence to support the claim that Shama was subsequently convicted in Raipur, and no proof was presented to confirm that the person convicted in Raipur was actually Shama. “In the absence of clinching proof of Shama being actually alive, the only possible inference that can be drawn from his established and prolonged torture by the appellants is that he would have died while in their custody”, he said.

Justice Kumar opined that, despite the rejection of fingerprint evidence proving the body was Shama's, the custodial torture inflicted on Shama by the appellants was sufficient to conclude that he died while in their custody. He said that the production of a dead body is not essential to prove a murder under the law. Citing Sevaka Perumal v. State of Tamil Nadu, he emphasized that reliable evidence of torture is sufficient to establish culpability for murder or culpable homicide even if the body is not conclusively identified.

Justice Kumar raised concerns about the broader issue of police misconduct and the failure of the legal system to address such abuses effectively. He referred to the writings of legal scholars Prof. Upendra Baxi and Prof. Srikrishna Deva Rao, who have argue that the lack of legal restraint on police powers leads to the rationalization of physical abuse as appropriate punishment, and the failure to address police excesses undermines the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Justice Kumar opined that when sufficient evidence of custodial torture is presented, it is up to the police to prove their innocence, whether the victim has died or disappeared. He highlighted that Section 29 of the Indian Police Act, 1861, holds police officers accountable for misconduct, with penalties of fines or imprisonment, and Police Manuals require officers to ensure the safe custody of detainees.

“The appellants have been let off rather lightly by convicting 12 them only under Section 304 Part-II IPC. Their careless disregard for the value of human life warranted a much more stringent punishment being visited upon them. In such circumstances, giving in to their duplicitous stories and permitting them to escape punishment would only add insult to injury”, he said.

Thus, he dismissed all appeals, maintaining the convictions under Section 304 Part II IPC and other charges.

Case no. – Criminal Appeal Nos. 1614-1618 of 2012

Case Title – Manik and Ors. v. State of Maharashtra

Citation : 2024 LiveLaw (SC) 747