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Debojit Pankika Charaideo Sonari v. State of Assam

Criminal Appeal · 2026 INSC 687Decided 13 Jul 2026
Crl.A. No.-003909-003909 - 2025
Justice Sanjay Karol · Justice Prasanna B. Varale

Background

A ten-year-old girl who had been informally adopted and was living with the appellant and his mother went missing after the mother left home for medical treatment, leaving the child in the appellant's sole care. The child remained missing for 22 days before her maternal uncle lodged a police complaint, and the appellant was eventually charged with her murder based mainly on a witness's account that the appellant had confessed to the killing and forced him, at knifepoint, to help dispose of the body in a river. The trial court convicted the appellant, and the Gauhati High Court upheld the conviction, leading to this final appeal.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the conviction. It held that "corpus delicti" (the fact that a crime occurred) does not require recovery of the victim's body: homicidal death can be proved through cogent circumstantial evidence even where, as here, the body was disposed of in a river and never recovered. The Court found the key witness's testimony credible and consistent with his earlier statements to police and a magistrate, and treated the appellant's complete failure to explain the child's 22-day disappearance from his exclusive custody, despite being asked under Section 313 CrPC, as a strong additional link in the chain of circumstantial evidence against him.

Lesson Learnt

A person can be convicted of murder even without the victim's body being found, if the surrounding circumstantial evidence is cogent and consistent; and where someone was in exclusive custody of a person who then goes missing or dies, an unexplained failure to account for what happened can itself be used as evidence of guilt.

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

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