Sanjay Rajak v. The State of Bihar
Background
A 5-6-year-old schoolchild was kidnapped from his school in 2007, allegedly by the appellant and a co-accused, who in confessional statements admitted to killing him and disposing of the body in a river; the body was never recovered. The appellant was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment under Section 364A IPC, while the co-accused was acquitted by the High Court on the ground that his identity as the abductor (who had his face covered) could not be firmly established. The appellant challenged his own conviction before the Supreme Court, arguing that his co-accused's acquittal and the absence of the recovered body undermined the prosecution's case.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that the co-accused's acquittal, based on specific doubts about his identification, did not automatically benefit the appellant, since the evidence against each accused had to be assessed independently. It found strong circumstantial evidence against the appellant: multiple witnesses saw him with the victim on the day of the kidnapping, and the victim's school bag and belongings were recovered from the appellant's house, for which he offered no explanation. The Court reaffirmed settled law that failure to recover the body (corpus delicti) is not fatal to a conviction where other cogent and reliable direct or circumstantial evidence establishes the homicidal death, distinguishing the precedents cited by the defence as resting on materially different facts. Finding no merit in the appeal, the Court dismissed it and upheld the conviction and life sentence.
Lesson Learnt
A conviction for murder or kidnapping-with-death can stand even without recovery of the victim's body, so long as other evidence, such as last-seen circumstances and unexplained recovery of the victim's belongings from the accused, reliably establishes guilt; an acquittal of a co-accused on separate grounds does not automatically clear a different accused.