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Hari & Anr. v. The State of Uttar Pradesh

Criminal Appeal · 2021 INSC 792Decided 26 Nov 2021
Criminal Appeal No. 186 of 2018
Justice L. Nageswara Rao · Justice Sanjiv Khanna · Justice B.R. Gavai

Background

In 1991, in a village in Uttar Pradesh, a young woman from the Jat community and a young man from the Jatav (Scheduled Caste) community wished to marry against their families' wishes. A caste "panchayat" (village assembly) of around 35-54 people forcibly summoned the couple and a third young man who had helped them, tortured them through the night, and ultimately forced the victims' own parents to hang all three to death before cremating the bodies, having sealed off the village so no one could leave or seek help. One witness escaped after the cremation to report the crime. Dozens of accused were tried; some were sentenced to death and others to life imprisonment for murder and related offences, with convictions upheld (and some death sentences commuted to life) by the High Court. Several convicts then appealed to the Supreme Court, and the State separately appealed the commutation of the death sentences.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court, applying the limited scope of its appellate review over concurrent findings of fact, upheld the convictions of most appellants based on consistent eyewitness testimony (including testimony from witnesses who had partly turned hostile but were still found credible), corroborated by recovered remains and belongings of the victims. It acquitted three appellants, two individuals and one duplicate-named accused, where the evidence did not meet the required threshold of at least two witnesses identifying their involvement, or where there was genuine confusion about which of two same-named persons was actually present. The Court upheld the High Court's commutation of the death sentences of seven appellants to life imprisonment, citing factors like their advanced age and the long passage of time, and accordingly dismissed the State's appeals against that commutation. The Court devoted extensive discussion to the problem of "honour killings" rooted in caste prejudice, reiterated prior directions on witness protection and preventing khap panchayat violence, and called for continued judicial and governmental vigilance against caste-based violence.

Lesson Learnt

Under Indian criminal law, mere presence in an unlawful assembly that commits a crime can make a person criminally liable for that crime (via the doctrine of "common object" under Section 149 IPC) even without personally striking a blow, but the prosecution must still show that at least two credible witnesses identified each individual's presence or role before a conviction will be sustained.

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

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