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Harendra Rai vs The State of Bihar & Ors.

Criminal Appeal · 2023 INSC 738Decided 18 Aug 2023
Criminal Appeal No. 1726 of 2015
Sanjay Kishan Kaul · Abhay S. Oka · Vikram Nath

Background

During the 1995 Bihar assembly elections, an FIR was lodged alleging that Prabhunath Singh, a sitting Member of Parliament and contesting candidate, opened fire on a group of villagers returning after voting, killing two persons (Daroga Rai and Rajendra Rai) and injuring a third. The trial dragged on for over a decade amid repeated transfers, and during it a key court witness, Lalmuni Devi (mother of one deceased), was abducted along with her husband just before she was to testify, leading to a Habeas Corpus petition, a courtroom scuffle, and scathing reports from an Inspecting Judge criticising the trial judge, the police, and the Public Prosecutor for effectively shielding the accused. Despite this, the Trial Court acquitted all accused in 2008, the Patna High Court dismissed the revision petition in 2021, and the deceased's brother (the appellant) appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that the trial had been thoroughly compromised: witnesses turned hostile under influence, the Investigating Officer was never produced, the Public Prosecutor effectively acted for the defence, and both the Trial Court and High Court ignored the administrative reports and the Habeas Corpus judgment documenting this misconduct. Taking judicial notice of these findings and treating the deceased Rajendra Rai's dying declaration (Fard Bayan) and the eventually-recorded testimony of the abducted witness Lalmuni Devi as reliable, the Court held that these pieces of evidence, combined with the accused's conduct after the crime (evading arrest, orchestrating the abduction), were sufficient to establish guilt even without straightforward eyewitness identification at trial. It convicted Prabhunath Singh under Sections 302 (murder) and 307 (attempt to murder) IPC, while leaving the acquittal of the other, less directly implicated co-accused undisturbed, and directed Bihar's police to take him into custody immediately and produce him for sentencing.

Lesson Learnt

When a criminal trial is shown to have been systematically subverted (through witness intimidation, a complicit prosecution, and a passive judiciary) an appellate court can and must look beyond the compromised trial record to independent judicial findings (like a Habeas Corpus judgment or administrative inquiry reports) and draw adverse inferences from the accused's conduct, rather than mechanically accepting an acquittal secured through such manipulation.

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

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