Kamta Yadav & Ors. v. State of Bihar
Background
In 1991, a dispute over land and past litigation between two families in Bihar led to an armed confrontation in a field, during which one man was fatally stabbed with a "bhala" (spear) and several others, including the informant and his relatives, were injured by the accused using a bhala and a lathi. Five men were tried for murder under Section 302 read with Section 149 IPC and convicted by the trial court, a conviction the High Court upheld; one of the five died during the pendency of this appeal, so the appeal abated as to him, leaving four appellants before the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The appellants argued that the crime scene's proximity to the police station made it improbable that witnesses could have clearly seen the incident, that no independent (non-related) witnesses were examined, and that the prosecution's failure to examine a chowkidar who allegedly gave the earliest information about the incident was fatal to its case. The Supreme Court rejected each argument: it found the distance argument factually unsupported, held that the defence had not shown how the absence of independent witnesses prejudiced the accused, and agreed with the High Court that the investigating officer's evidence about how the FIR and case diary were recorded left no room for an adverse inference from the chowkidar not being examined. The Court held that the testimony of six eye-witnesses, three of whom were themselves injured in the attack, was credible, consistent, and could sustain conviction even though the witnesses were related to the deceased, since relationship alone does not disqualify a truthful witness; it simply calls for closer scrutiny, which both courts below had already applied. Finding no merit in the appeal, the Court dismissed it and upheld the conviction.
Lesson Learnt
An eyewitness's relationship to the victim does not by itself make their testimony unreliable, especially where the witness was also injured in the same attack, and minor investigative gaps, such as not tracking down an informal first informant, will not undermine an otherwise consistent and credible prosecution case.