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Dasin Bai @ Shanti Bai v. State of Chhattisgarh

Criminal Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Criminal Appeal No. 827 of 2008)Decided 11 Feb 2015
Criminal Appeal No. 827 of 2008
Justice M.Y. Eqbal · Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose

Background

The appellant, Dasin Bai, was convicted of murder for pouring kerosene on the deceased, Raju Rajak, while he slept at her house and setting him on fire; he died two days later in hospital. Both the Trial Court and the Chhattisgarh High Court had convicted her and sentenced her to life imprisonment based largely on an oral dying declaration he made to neighbours who rushed to help, naming her as the person who set him alight. She appealed to the Supreme Court from jail, arguing the dying declaration was unreliable given the severity of his burns and that the witnesses were not independent.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that a truthful and consistent dying declaration can, by itself, sustain a conviction without any further corroboration, relying on its own precedents (Ravi v. State of T.N., Mafabhai Nagarbhai Raval, Pothakamuri Srinivasulu). It found the two eyewitnesses' accounts of the deceased's dying declaration were consistent and that the appellant's 70% burn injuries did not make it impossible for him to speak, since no doctor had testified otherwise. The Court also invoked Section 106 of the Evidence Act, since the facts of how the deceased came to be burnt inside her own house were especially within the accused's knowledge, her failure to offer any explanation (she even claimed not to know the victim's name) strengthened the case against her. Finding no infirmity in the lower courts' reasoning, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the conviction and life sentence.

Lesson Learnt

A dying person's statement naming their attacker, if consistent and credible, can be enough on its own to convict: it does not need other supporting evidence; and an accused who stays silent about facts only they could know (such as what happened inside their own home) risks that silence being held against them.

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

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