The Delhi High Court has held that a witness’s later retraction does not automatically erase earlier sworn testimony. Upholding Pramod Kumar’s robbery conviction, it relied on corroborating police evidence and contemporaneous records, while setting aside separate convictions for receiving the same stolen property and under Section 27 of the Arms Act.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Thursday (October 29) partly allowed a criminal appeal arising from a 2012 mobile-phone robbery, affirming the principal convictions while correcting two additional counts [Pramod Kumar v. State].
Justice Madhu Jain held that the prosecution had established the robbery and use of a knife despite material witnesses changing their versions during delayed cross-examination. The Court directed Kumar, whose sentence had been suspended in 2017, to surrender within two weeks to serve the remaining sentence.
The case and the competing versions
The prosecution alleged that a student’s mobile phone was stolen while he travelled with friends on a bus near East Patel Nagar on July 13, 2012. According to the initial testimony, a call to the missing handset revealed it in Kumar’s pocket. When its return was demanded, he placed a knife against one of the friends and threatened to stab him. Passengers and others apprehended him.
Two witnesses supported this account in their examinations-in-chief in December 2013 but materially departed from it when cross-examined approximately eleven and fourteen months later. Kumar argued that their evidence, read in full, could not sustain the conviction. The State relied on their earlier accounts and the recovery evidence.
No automatic preference for either version
In paragraphs 21–25, the Court explained that neither a subsequent retraction nor permission to cross-examine one’s own witness wipes the entire testimony from the record. Equally, the examination-in-chief does not invariably prevail. Courts must assess the deposition as a whole against the other evidence and identify the portions that remain dependable.
As paragraph 21 states: “The testimony of a witness must always be read as a whole and assessed with due care and caution.”
The judgment also recalled Supreme Court decisions cautioning against long gaps between examination-in-chief and cross-examination. Here, an intervening request for an adjournment to seek quashing was relevant to assessing the changed accounts, but the High Court expressly said that request was not, by itself, proof of a compromise or inducement.
Corroboration sustained the robbery finding
The Court found the later denials internally inconsistent. It relied on the PCR official’s account of finding Kumar apprehended at the spot, recovery of the phone and knife, the investigating officer’s testimony, and contemporaneous DD and PCR records. Although it inferred intervening influence on the witnesses, it stressed in paragraph 32 that guilt did not rest on that inference alone.
The convictions under Sections 392 and 397 IPC and Section 25(1B)(b) of the Arms Act were therefore affirmed.
Two additional convictions set aside
The Court nevertheless held that Section 411 IPC, dealing with receiving stolen property, could not separately punish Kumar for receiving or retaining the same phone he had been found to have robbed. Relying on Supreme Court precedent, paragraph 34 distinguishes the principal robber from a receiver of stolen property.
The Section 27 Arms Act conviction also failed. The proved breach concerned possession and carrying of a button-operated knife contrary to a notification under Section 4. The prosecution had not established the contravention of Section 5 or Section 7 required for Section 27. The conviction under Section 25(1B)(b) remained intact.
The surviving sentences, including seven years’ rigorous imprisonment under Section 397 IPC, will run concurrently, with set-off under Section 428 CrPC. The appeal was partly allowed; it did not result in an acquittal of the robbery.
Case: Pramod Kumar v. State
Case Number: CRL.A. 98/2016
CNR: DLHC010233012016
Court: Delhi High Court
Bench: Justice Madhu Jain
Decision: October 29, 2026
Outcome: Appeal partly allowed; robbery and Section 25(1B)(b) Arms Act convictions affirmed; Section 411 IPC and Section 27 Arms Act convictions set aside.