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Rajvinder Singh v. State of Haryana

Criminal Appeal · Neutral citation not assigned (Criminal Appeal No. 1098 of 2012)Decided 16 Oct 2015
Criminal Appeal No. 1098 of 2012
Justice F.M. Ibrahim Kalifulla · Justice Uday Umesh Lalit

Background

Pushpa Verma, a retired headmistress and property dealer in Karnal, was reported missing in January 2003, and her body was never recovered. The appellant held general powers of attorney over her properties at Panipat and Gurgaon, sold the Panipat plot for Rs 12.5 lakh, and sought to transfer the Gurgaon plot, but the land authority flagged that her signatures did not match her genuine ones. He was convicted under Sections 364, 302 and 201 of the IPC for kidnapping, murder and destroying evidence, and the High Court upheld the conviction.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the conviction. It refused to admit a computer-altered comparison of a photograph with the body, filed as new evidence at the appeal stage, and in any case found the comparison unconvincing. The Court relied on a chain of circumstances: the disputed power-of-attorney and will transactions, signatures that did not match her genuine signatures, sale payments not reflected in her account, a gold ring marked "PV" recovered from his house, and his extra-judicial confession to an advocate. Although it doubted the voter identity card recovered from bushes near the canal, it held the remaining circumstances pointed "only to one hypothesis," his guilt, and it recommended disciplinary action against the Sub-Registrar who had registered the documents without the parties appearing before him.

Lesson Learnt

A murder conviction can stand even without the body if the surrounding facts, taken together, leave no reasonable explanation other than guilt. A person holding another's power of attorney cannot keep the proceeds of sales and simply claim, without evidence, that the money was passed on.

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

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