Ranvir Singh etc. vs The State of Madhya Pradesh
Background
In July 1992, in a Madhya Pradesh village, two men (Hukum Singh and Kishori Kachi) were attacked by a large group, witnesses spoke of 50 to 100 people, allegedly over a water dispute and resentment at outsiders buying property in the village; Kishori died on the spot and Hukum Singh died three days later. A "Dehati Nalishi" (village report) said to be Hukum Singh's statement to the investigating officer was treated as the FIR and as a dying declaration. The trial court convicted the accused, including the appellants Sardar Singh and Dhola Ram, of murder and rioting and sentenced them to life; the Gwalior bench of the High Court upheld the life sentence for Kishori's death and reduced the charge for Hukum Singh's death to culpable homicide. Several co-accused died or completed their sentences during the appeal; the appellants had spent nine years in jail.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court allowed the appeals, set aside the convictions on benefit of doubt, and ordered the release of appellant Dhola Ram. It found the prosecution's foundation unreliable: the witnesses described three different FIRs at different times, the investigating officer contradicted himself about when and where he recorded the deceased's statement, and the deceased's thumb impression sat in the middle of the Dehati Nalishi with writing over and after it, suggesting a blank paper was thumb-marked and filled in later by a legally trained hand. The Court held that a badly injured man was unlikely to have been conscious enough to make the statement, that no magistrate or doctor had been called though there was time to do so, and that the so-called dying declaration could not be relied on. The eyewitnesses did not know the accused by name and identified them for the first time in court two to three years later without any test identification parade; the injured witness was never even examined by the police. Given the mob of 50-100 attackers, the Court stressed that Section 149 liability demands a higher degree of proof of each accused's membership of the unlawful assembly, and that neither the trial court nor the High Court had applied its mind to these defects.
Lesson Learnt
A conviction cannot rest on a dying declaration whose making is itself doubtful. When time permits, it should be recorded by a magistrate or certified by a doctor, not just by the investigating officer. Where a large crowd is involved, courts must scrutinise each accused's role individually before fastening group liability, and unexplained suppression of the real first information by police can bring down the whole prosecution case.