The Supreme Court restored a 1995 murder acquittal, holding that a High Court cannot substitute its own view for a plausible trial court finding without showing the acquittal was perverse.
The Supreme Court restored the acquittal of a man accused in a 1995 murder in Himachal Pradesh, holding that a High Court cannot overturn a trial court’s acquittal and substitute its own view where the trial court has taken a plausible one, without first demonstrating that the acquittal was perverse.
A Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Prasanna B. Varale allowed the criminal appeal, set aside the conviction recorded by the High Court, restored the trial court’s order of acquittal, and directed that the appellant be released forthwith unless his custody was required in any other case.
The core of the ruling lies in the standard governing appeals against acquittal. The Court held that where the conclusion reached by the trial court is a possible or plausible one, an appellate court is not entitled to replace it with its own merely because a different view is also available on the evidence.
Recording the principle, the Bench held,
“When the view expressed by the Trial Court is either the possible or plausible one, the High Court should not replace the Trial Court’s view with its view.”
The Court faulted the High Court for having branded the trial court’s judgment as perverse without identifying which of its findings actually suffered from perversity an omission that went to the root of the reversal, since a finding of perversity is the very foundation on which an acquittal may be disturbed.
Emphasising the heightened threshold that applies once an accused has been acquitted, the Bench underscored that an order of acquittal reinforces the presumption of innocence, and that an appellate court must be correspondingly circumspect before setting it aside.
It held,
“We do not find any perversity with the views expressed by the Trial Court, and an order of acquittal creates a double presumption and, therefore, the First Appellate Court will have to be doubly sure in reversing the order of the Trial Court which has not been done in the present case.”
The prosecution alleged that the appellant, along with another accused, murdered a man on April 26, 1995 over a dispute concerning a loan. The deceased was said to have been smothered, strangulated and stabbed. The case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence.
Following the appellant’s arrest, the prosecution claimed to have recovered blood-stained clothes and a muffler allegedly used in the commission of the offence.
The trial court acquitted the accused, finding the prosecution case beset by serious deficiencies. It disbelieved the testimony of key witnesses, rejected the “last seen together theory”, doubted the alleged recoveries, noted inconsistencies concerning the timing of the injuries, and concluded that the prosecution had failed to establish an unbroken chain of circumstances pointing to the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt.
The High Court, on the State’s appeal, reappreciated the evidence, reversed the acquittal and convicted the appellant.
Examining the material, the Supreme Court found that the weaknesses identified by the trial court were well founded. It noted that the testimony of PW-3 contained significant improvements over his earlier statement, and that the First Information Report had been registered belatedly notwithstanding that the wife of the deceased had returned home the same night a delay for which the explanation offered was found unsatisfactory.
The Court further held that the alleged recovery of the blood-stained shirt was doubtful, since the DNA analysis had not conclusively connected the blood found on it to the crime. Taken together, these infirmities meant that the trial court’s view was not merely plausible but well reasoned, and the High Court had shown no perversity that could justify displacing it.
Allowing the appeal, the Supreme Court set aside the High Court’s judgment of conviction, restored the acquittal recorded by the trial court, and directed that the appellant be released forthwith unless he was required in connection with any other case.
Case Title: Darshan Kumar v. State of Himachal Pradesh