Mahendra Singh v. The State of Chhattisgarh
Background
In April 1999, the appellant Mahendra Singh and a co-accused were alleged to have murdered a man after a village fair. Singh absconded; his case was split from the co-accused's (who was tried separately and acquitted). Singh was arrested only in 2017, 18 years later. By the time of his trial, the key eyewitness had died, and the other witnesses either turned hostile or failed to identify him (one noted there were two men of the same name in the village). He was nonetheless convicted based on the deceased eyewitness's testimony recorded years earlier, before his arrest.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court acquitted the appellant, holding that Section 299 CrPC, which allows testimony recorded in an absconding accused's absence to later be used against him if the witness becomes unavailable, requires a court to have formally and conjunctively established, at the time the evidence was first recorded, both that the accused was absconding and that there was no immediate prospect of arresting him. No such order had ever been passed in 1999. Since this mandatory precondition was never satisfied, the deceased witness's earlier testimony could not lawfully be used against the appellant, and without it, the prosecution's case collapsed.
Lesson Learnt
Testimony recorded while an accused is absconding can only be used against him later, without a chance to cross-examine, if a court formally recorded, at that earlier stage, that the specific legal conditions for doing so were met. The passage of decades cannot substitute for a missing court order, and prosecutors must secure this finding at the time, not try to rely on it after the fact.