Chhattisgarh High Court: A Division Bench of Prashant Kumar Mishra and Gautam Chourdiya, JJ. allowed a criminal appeal and quashed the order of the trial court whereby the accused-appellant was convicted and sentenced for committing the murder of the deceased.
The accused was charged for murdering the deceased with whom he was in an illicit relationship. He was convicted by the trial court on the basis of circumstantial evidence — mainly, the positive opinion of Fingerprints Expert. Aggrieved thereby, the accused filed the present appeal.
A.K. Gupta, Advocate for the accused-appellant, contended that the chain of circumstantial evidence was not so complete as required to prove the guilt of the accused. Per contra, Santosh Bharat, P. representing the State supported the impugned order.
The High Court relied on the Supreme Court decision in Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra, (1984) 4 SCC 116. It was observed: “When we examine the circumstantial evidence available in the case vis-a-vis the defects in the investigation, it is seen that the report of the Fingerprints Expert though is positive for the prosecution but there is no proof as to who collected the finger prints from the spot. The prosecution has not filed the memo of obtainment of fingerprints from the spot.”
It was then noticed that the memo of obtaining fingerprints of the accused did not carry the date, or the signature of the accused, or signature of the person who classified and tested it. It was observed further: “More importantly, if on the date of obtaining the impressions, the accused was in judicial custody, the said impressions could not have been obtained without an order from the Magistrate. Thus, the document does not satisfy the test of legal and procedural sanctity in either of the terms. If on the said date the accused was in police custody then the document should carry the signatures of witnesses as well as the accused and if he was in judicial custody there should have been permission from the concerned Magistrate. Since, it is not proved that the admitted fingerprints said to be of the accused were obtained from him while he was in custody, the report of the Fingerprint Expert is not such evidence which can be relied upon as one of the circumstances in the chain of circumstantial evidence to establish the guilt of the accused.”
Similarly, laches were noted in other evidence as well and it was held that the prosecution had failed to knit together the chain of circumstantial evidence so as to lead to only one conclusion — guilt of the accused. Accordingly, the appeal was allowed and the conviction of the accused was set aside.[Kishan Singh Parvana v. State of Chhattisgarh, 2019 SCC OnLine Chh 95, decided on 29-07-2019]