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Renuka Prasad v. The State Represented by Assistant Superintendent of Police

Criminal Appeal · 2025 INSC 657Decided 9 May 2025
Crl.A. Nos. 3189-3190 of 2023 (with connected Crl.A. No. 3399 of 2024 and Crl.A. Nos. 85-86 of 2024)
Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia · Justice K. Vinod Chandran

Background

A man was hacked to death in front of his teenage son, allegedly the result of a bitter sibling business rivalry in which the deceased had sided with one brother against the accused. Of 87 witnesses produced at trial, 71, including the key eyewitnesses, turned hostile, and the Trial Court acquitted all the accused for lack of evidence. The High Court reversed this and convicted six accused for murder and conspiracy, relying heavily on the investigating officers' testimony about what witnesses had earlier told the police.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court restored the acquittal, holding that the High Court had wrongly used witnesses' Section 161 CrPC statements (recorded during investigation) as if they were substantive evidence, when the law allows such statements to be used only to contradict a witness, not to prove guilt when the witness disowns them in court. It also found the "recoveries" of weapons, clothing, and cash were either not properly linked to the crime or were confession-based statements barred under Sections 25-26 of the Evidence Act. With no eyewitness identifying the accused in court and no legally admissible chain of evidence, the presumption of innocence, reinforced by the original acquittal, was not displaced.

Lesson Learnt

A conviction cannot be built on a police officer's account of what hostile witnesses supposedly said during investigation; once witnesses recant in court, those investigation statements can only be used to contradict them, not as proof of guilt, however troubling the underlying crime may be.

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

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