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Jagvir Singh vs The State of Uttar Pradesh

Not available · 2024 INSC 384Decided 7 May 2024
Not available
Justice B.R. Gavai · Justice Sandeep Mehta

Background

In August 2002, in a village in Mainpuri district, Uttar Pradesh, a dispute over cattle sheds (haudas/naands) placed on a neighbour's land escalated into gunfire: the victim, Sanju, was allegedly shot from a rooftop by one of the accused persons (Omkar) and the appellant, Jagvir Singh, while two other accused were said to have surrounded him. Sanju died from a single gunshot wound. The trial court convicted the appellant and co-accused Omkar for murder (Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC) based on the testimony of alleged eyewitnesses, sentencing them to life imprisonment; two other accused were acquitted. The Allahabad High Court upheld the conviction, and Jagvir Singh appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court closely scrutinized the so-called eyewitnesses' testimony and found it fundamentally unreliable: the two closest eyewitnesses were relatives of the victim who claimed to have watched the fatal assault yet did nothing to intervene: behavior the Court found "highly unnatural." More significantly, physical evidence (the site inspection plan and witness admissions) showed the rooftop from which the shots were allegedly fired was not even visible from where the witnesses claimed to be standing, and the distance between the two locations was considerable. A third purported eyewitness admitted he was working in his field at the time and could not have seen the incident. Given these serious and irreconcilable discrepancies about who actually fired the fatal shot, the Court held that convicting the appellant on such "flimsy and wavering evidence" was unjustified, and that both the trial court and High Court had committed a glaring error in accepting these witnesses as reliable eyewitnesses. The conviction and sentence were quashed, and the appellant was acquitted and ordered released.

Lesson Learnt

A criminal conviction cannot rest on eyewitness testimony that is contradicted by basic physical facts (such as visibility and distance) or that describes conduct inconsistent with ordinary human behavior in the circumstances described. Courts must give the accused the benefit of the doubt when the prosecution's core evidence does not hold together on close scrutiny.

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

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