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Amrish Rana v. The State of Himachal Pradesh

Criminal Appeal · 2018 INSC 910Decided 28 Sept 2018
Criminal Appeal No. 1232 of 2018
Justice Ranjan Gogoi · Justice Navin Sinha

Background

The appellant was convicted under Section 307 IPC (attempt to murder) and other provisions, along with Section 25 of the Arms Act, by the trial court and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment with fine. The conviction rested substantially on the testimony of an injured witness (PW-11), a jail warder who claimed to know the appellant from an earlier period of custody together. The appellant challenged his conviction before the Supreme Court, arguing the witness's identification was unreliable.

Decision Breakdown

The Court noted that although PW-11 claimed to know the appellant from before, he did not name the appellant in the FIR: he named only one other accused and described the rest as unknown assailants. The appellant's name surfaced for the first time only in the witness's court deposition, which the Court treated as a material omission and improvement over the original police statement, not a trivial lapse. The witness was also confronted in cross-examination with contradictions regarding who fired the second shot. Given these infirmities, the Court held that the prosecution had failed to establish the appellant's presence at the scene beyond reasonable doubt. The appeal was allowed, the appellant was acquitted on benefit of doubt, and his release from custody was ordered.

Lesson Learnt

A witness's failure to name an accused in the first report to police (the FIR), followed by naming them for the first time only in court testimony, is treated by courts as a serious omission that can entitle the accused to acquittal on benefit of doubt, especially when the witness claims prior acquaintance with the accused and had no obvious reason to omit the name earlier.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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