Eighteen years after he was sentenced to life imprisonment for a double murder in a firing on a passenger bus in Begusarai, Ranjit Mahto has been acquitted by the Patna High Court, which found that the only eyewitness may not even have been on the bus and that the police investigation was “lacking to say the least.”
Patna: The Patna High Court has set aside the conviction and life sentence of Ranjit Mahto in a 2005 case in which two passengers were shot dead inside a minibus near Begusarai, holding that the solitary eyewitness was not wholly reliable, that her presence on the bus was contradicted by an injured witness and by a jail register, and that Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code could not be used to fill the gap in proof of identity [Ranjit Mahto v. State of Bihar].
A Division Bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar Singh and Justice Ansul, in a judgment authored by Justice Ansul, allowed the appeal filed in 2008 and discharged the appellant, on bail since November 2009, from his bail bonds.
The case
According to the FIR lodged by Aruna Devi on February 28, 2005 at Sadar Hospital, Begusarai, she was travelling to Begusarai in a minibus with Kailu Yadav when, near a tea shop at Bibinar, six men on two motorcycles surrounded the bus and fired indiscriminately. She alleged that the appellant entered the bus and shot Kailu Yadav dead, while another accused shot a woman passenger, a teacher, who also died. Two other passengers were injured. She attributed the attack to criminal rivalry between the appellant and Kailu Yadav.
In February 2008, the Additional Sessions Judge, Fast Track Court-V, Begusarai convicted the appellant under Section 302 IPC and sentenced him to life imprisonment, along with sentences under Section 307/34 IPC and Section 27 of the Arms Act.
A star witness under scrutiny
The Court noted that, of the witnesses of fact, only the informant supported the prosecution on identity. The two injured passengers established the firing but did not identify the assailants, and the tea-stall owner and her daughter turned hostile. One injured passenger, Fuleshwari Devi, went further: she told the trial court that the men in the dock were not the ones who fired, and that Aruna Devi, whom she knew as the Mukhiya of her panchayat, was not on the bus at all.
Testing the informant’s account against the principles in Vadivelu Thevar and later Supreme Court decisions on a sole witness, the Bench found serious problems. The FIR and the Investigating Officer recorded her statement at Sadar Hospital, while she claimed in court that it was taken at the police station. Her account of returning to Begusarai in the same bus with the police and the injured was not supported by the Investigating Officer.
A visiting register of the District Jail, Begusarai, proved by a jail official, recorded her as a visitor to her husband, then in custody, on the very date of the incident, and two defence witnesses said she learnt of the murder at the jail. The bus owner and driver, examined by police during investigation, were never produced to confirm she was a passenger.
The Court held that these were not minor slips:
“These are not discrepancies which can safely be brushed aside as normal errors of memory. A witness may forget peripheral details. But whether she was in the bus at all, where her first statement was recorded, how she travelled to Begusarai after the occurrence, and whether she was present in the bus when an injured eyewitness says she was not, go to the foundation of her testimony.”
Placing her in the third Vadivelu Thevar category, neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable, the Court held that corroboration in material particulars was necessary, and that it was “conspicuously absent on the crucial question of identity.”
Section 34 cannot cure the defect
Rejecting reliance on common intention, the Bench said:
“Section 34 of the Indian Penal Code cannot cure this defect. Common intention is not a substitute for proof of participation. Before the doctrine of common intention can operate against an accused, the prosecution must first establish by reliable evidence that the accused participated in the criminal act.”
Police investigation ‘lacking’
The Bench was sharply critical of the investigation. It noted that the post-mortem was conducted on an “unknown male”, and that the Investigating Officer admitted no application was made to record Kailu Yadav’s name in the report. The bus, in which dead bodies, blood and empty cartridges were found, was available to the police, yet the case diary did not record even the distance between the cabin and the last seat, which could have tested where the informant claimed to be sitting. It observed:
“The investigation is lacking to say the least. The Police did not identify the deceased at the time of post mortem. No sketch map of the PO was made. No murder weapon was recovered. No TIP was attempted. Though defective investigation may not lead to acquittal but if it fails to connect the dots of prosecution case, it ultimately has a role in acquittal of the accused.”
Holding that the informant was not a witness of “sterling quality” whose testimony could sustain the conviction without independent corroboration, the Court allowed the appeal, set aside the judgment of February 7, 2008 and the sentence of February 8, 2008, and acquitted the appellant.
Case Title: Ranjit Mahto v. State of Bihar [Criminal Appeal (DB) No. 281 of 2008]
Bench: Justice Sanjay Kumar Singh and Justice Ansul, Patna High Court
Date of Judgment: October 1, 2026
Appearances: Senior Advocate Ramakant Sharma with Advocate Bipin Kumar for the Appellant; APP Bipin Kumar for the State