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B. Virupakshaiah v. State of Karnataka & Ors.

Criminal Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Criminal Appeal No. 640 of 2012)Decided 12 Feb 2016
Criminal Appeal No. 640 of 2012
Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose · Justice R.K. Agrawal

Background

Twelve accused were charged with conspiring to murder two men in revenge for an earlier killing of their relatives, after an incident on a national highway in Karnataka in 2005 in which two occupants of a car were dragged out and fatally assaulted. The trial court convicted all twelve and sentenced them to life imprisonment based on eyewitness testimony, recovery evidence, and proof of conspiracy. The Karnataka High Court reversed this on appeal and acquitted all the accused, finding the prosecution's evidence unreliable. The complainant (son of one deceased) and the State separately appealed the acquittal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court examined the testimonies of the purported eyewitnesses and found major inconsistencies: the two witnesses present at the scene gave contradictory accounts of the number of assailants and could not identify the accused, while four other "eyewitnesses" had stayed silent for a long time and gave mutually inconsistent accounts of crowd size and other details. The recovery of weapons and a mobile phone was also unproven, since several attesting witnesses turned hostile and no link was established between the recovered items and the accused. The Court further held there was no cogent evidence of a criminal conspiracy, as the witnesses who claimed knowledge of a conspiracy meeting gave accounts that did not withstand cross-examination. Finding no compelling reason to interfere with the High Court's acquittal, the Supreme Court dismissed both appeals.

Lesson Learnt

A criminal conviction cannot stand on eyewitness testimony riddled with material contradictions or on recovery evidence whose own attesting witnesses turn hostile: the benefit of the doubt goes to the accused when the prosecution's version of events keeps changing between the police statement and courtroom testimony.

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

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