Indrajit Das vs The State of Tripura
Background
On the morning of 20 June 2007 police in Kailashahar, Tripura, were told of a large pool of blood on the Kailashahar-Kumarghat road; at the spot they found a blood-stained "vojali" (large knife), a thread, broken pieces of a motorcycle mirror, and drag marks leading into the jungle and down to the Manu river. The same day a man reported that his nephew Kaushik Sarkar had gone out on his bike the previous evening and not returned; Kaushik's mother said he had left with two friends, Indrajit Das and a juvenile "K". The police claimed both confessed to drinking with Kaushik, attacking him with knives, and throwing his body and motorcycle into the river. Kaushik's body was never found, only a limb, which was never DNA-tested. Indrajit was convicted of murder and sentenced to life by the trial court in 2011, and the Tripura High Court upheld the conviction in 2013.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court allowed the appeal and acquitted Indrajit Das, ordering his immediate release. Applying the settled test for circumstantial evidence from Sharad Birdhichand Sarda, every link in the chain must be proved beyond reasonable doubt and the chain must be consistent only with guilt, it found the major links missing. The prosecution offered no motive at all, which carries special weight in a purely circumstantial case. The "last seen" evidence was an improvement: neither the uncle's original phone report nor the police statements of the uncle or mother mentioned Indrajit or the juvenile, and the mother's version even contradicted the confession she was relying on. The recoveries were from an open place along obvious drag marks, not anywhere in the accused's exclusive knowledge. The extra-judicial confession, retracted at trial, was a weak piece of evidence needing strong corroboration, and the prosecution's own evidence was inconsistent with it. The Court noted, without deciding the point, the danger of convicting where the body has never been recovered.
Lesson Learnt
Where no one saw the crime, a conviction can stand only if every circumstance is proved and together they leave no room for innocence; a retracted confession to police and witness accounts that grow over time cannot fill the gaps. The benefit of any real doubt goes to the accused, even in a gruesome case.