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Santosh & Anr. vs. State of Uttar Pradesh

Criminal Appeal · 2022 INSC 215Decided 22 Feb 2022
Criminal Appeal No. 1506 of 2019
Uday Umesh Lalit · S. Ravindra Bhat · Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha

Background

Following a quarrel at a colony in Gorakhpur district in March 1998, a group of accused allegedly assaulted several people and fatally shot one Vivek Kumar Pandey after chasing him into a house; two other men, Asgar and Ramesh Yadav, were also injured. The trial court acquitted all six accused, but the Allahabad High Court, in a State appeal, reversed the acquittal of two of them, Santosh and Bhola, convicting them under Sections 302 and 324 read with 34 IPC and sentencing them to life imprisonment. Santosh and Bhola then appealed to the Supreme Court against their conviction.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that the prosecution's case rested mainly on the eyewitness testimony of the two injured witnesses (PW-2 and PW-3), whose injuries were documented by doctors soon after the incident and were consistent with the medical evidence, making their presence at the scene credible. It held that even though the High Court was hearing an appeal against acquittal (which calls for caution before interference), the reversal was justified on these facts since the eyewitness accounts were cogent and consistent. The Court found no reason to take a different view and dismissed the appeal, upholding the conviction and sentence.

Lesson Learnt

An appellate court can properly overturn a trial court's acquittal and convict where injured eyewitnesses give consistent testimony that is corroborated by contemporaneous medical evidence: physical injury records examined near the time of the incident carry strong evidentiary weight in establishing a witness's presence and credibility.

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

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