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Shanmugam v. State by Inspector of Police

Criminal Appeal · 2021 INSC 230Decided 6 Apr 2021
Criminal Appeal No. 900 of 2010
Justice Ashok Bhushan · Justice S. Abdul Nazeer · Justice Hemant Gupta

Background

The appellant was arrested by police for alleged copyright/video-piracy offences and was held overnight in a room at the Video Piracy Cell office along with a Head Constable, since the office had no other space and the constable had nowhere else to stay. The next morning, the Head Constable was found dead from a head injury caused by an iron stool, and the appellant was caught attempting to escape from the locked room. He was convicted of murder and attempt to escape from custody by the trial court, a conviction the Madras High Court upheld.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court examined the chain of circumstantial evidence, including that the appellant and the deceased were alone and locked inside the room at the time of death, that the appellant made a deceptive emergency call using the deceased's phone to create a diversion, and that he was caught trying to escape as soon as the door was opened. The Court held that once these circumstances were established, the burden shifted to the appellant to explain how the deceased died, which he failed to do. Finding the prosecution's chain of circumstances complete and the trial court/High Court's concurrent findings sound, the Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the conviction and life sentence.

Lesson Learnt

In cases built on circumstantial evidence, if the accused was the only person with the victim at the time and place of death, the law places a burden on the accused to offer a credible explanation; silence or an unconvincing explanation in such a situation can be treated as a strong circumstance supporting guilt.

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

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