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Shio Shankar Dubey & Ors. v. State of Bihar

Criminal Appeal · 2019 INSC 658Decided 9 May 2019
Criminal Appeal No. 1617 of 2014
Justice Ashok Bhushan · Justice K.M. Joseph

Background

In a 1980 incident near Sasaram, Bihar, a group of men allegedly stopped a man travelling by rickshaw, assaulted him with weapons on the orders of the local Mukhiya (village head), and killed him, reportedly over a prior election rivalry for the Mukhiya's post. The trial court convicted several accused including the Mukhiya, Shio Shankar Dubey, under Section 302 read with other IPC provisions, and the Patna High Court upheld the conviction in 2013. Three surviving convicts appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the key witnesses were "interested" relatives of the deceased, that one eyewitness failed to name one of the appellants, and that a discrepancy existed between the inquest report (which suggested a bullet wound) and the post-mortem report (which found no bullet injury).

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court rejected all three defence arguments. Relying on a long line of precedent (Kartik Malhar, Dalbir Kaur, Dalip Singh, Namdeo), it held that a close relative of the victim is a "natural" witness, not an "interested" one, and their testimony can sustain a conviction if otherwise reliable; here the eyewitnesses had withstood cross-examination. It held that one eyewitness's failure to name a particular accused did not exonerate him, since other eyewitnesses had clearly placed him at the scene. On the inquest/post-mortem discrepancy, the Court found this was merely the inquest officer's visual "opinion" based on the severity of head injuries, not a forensic finding, and did not contradict the medically-confirmed fatal injuries caused by blunt weapons. Finding the prosecution's case fully proved, including a clear motive and an FIR recorded within 30 minutes of the incident, the Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the conviction and sentence.

Lesson Learnt

Being related to a murder victim does not automatically make a witness's testimony unreliable in Indian criminal law: courts treat close relatives as "natural" witnesses whose evidence can found a conviction if it is otherwise credible and withstands scrutiny.

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

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