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Ravinder Singh @ Kaku vs. The State of Punjab

Criminal Appeal · 2022 INSC 505Decided 4 May 2022
Criminal Appeal No. 1307 of 2019
Uday Umesh Lalit · Vineet Saran

Background

Two young children (aged 10 and 6) in Moga, Punjab were kidnapped and found murdered in 2009. Their mother Anita (A1), an acquaintance Ravinder Singh @ Kaku (A2), and Ranjit Kumar Gupta (A3) were tried and all three were sentenced to death by the Trial Court under Section 302/120B IPC. The High Court acquitted A1 and A3 but partly allowed A2's appeal, commuting his death sentence to 20 years' rigorous imprisonment based on a case built entirely on circumstantial evidence: motive (an alleged illicit intimacy with A1 inferred from phone call records), the "last seen" theory, and recovery of material objects. A2 appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, while the State separately appealed the acquittals of A1 and A3.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court reiterated the settled rule that a conviction based purely on circumstantial evidence requires a complete, cogent chain of circumstances wholly incompatible with the accused's innocence. It found the High Court's inference of a "motive", that A2 was infatuated with A1 based merely on the frequency/duration of their phone calls, to be dubious conjecture unsupported by any direct evidence of an illicit relationship, especially since the High Court itself had acknowledged there was no direct proof of such intimacy. The Court also found the "last seen" evidence and recoveries inconclusive, and separately held that electronic evidence (call detail records) produced without the mandatory certificate under Section 65B(4) of the Indian Evidence Act was inadmissible: oral evidence cannot substitute for this statutory certification requirement. With the "tripod" of motive, last-seen theory, and recovery all found wanting, the Court held the circumstantial evidence could not sustain A2's conviction, allowed his appeal, set aside his conviction, ordered his immediate release (unless wanted in another case), and dismissed the State's appeals against the acquittals of A1 and A3.

Lesson Learnt

A criminal conviction resting solely on circumstantial evidence demands an unbroken, fully-proved chain of facts pointing only to guilt. Courts cannot infer motive from speculation (such as reading intimacy into phone-call frequency), and electronic records like call detail printouts are legally inadmissible without the mandatory Section 65B(4) certificate, no matter how persuasive they might otherwise seem.

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

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