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Somasundaram @ Somu v. The State Rep. by the Deputy Commissioner of Police

Criminal Appeal · 2020 INSC 412Decided 3 Jun 2020
Criminal Appeal No. 403 of 2010
Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman · Justice K.M. Joseph · Justice V. Ramasubramanian

Background

A former Tamil Nadu MLA, M.K. Balan, went missing after his morning walk in December 2001 and was later found to have been kidnapped, held captive, and murdered by a group of 18 accused who intended to extort money or property from him; his body was later cremated under a false identity to cover up the crime. The trial court convicted most of the accused on charges including conspiracy, kidnapping, wrongful confinement, extortion, murder, and destruction of evidence. Several convicted men appealed, and this particular case was referred to a three-judge Bench because an earlier two-judge Bench hearing some of the appeals had split: one judge voted to acquit, the other to uphold the convictions.

Decision Breakdown

The three-judge Bench examined the evidence afresh, including testimony from two accomplice-witnesses who described the abduction, the captivity at a factory, and the eventual killing. It held that accomplice evidence can be relied upon to convict if the courts find the witnesses credible, even without independent corroboration in every detail, and that since the accused were last known to have had the victim in their custody before his death, a legal presumption arose that they were responsible for the murder unless they explained what happened to him (which they did not). The Court upheld the convictions of all six appealing groups of accused under various combinations of Sections 364, 365, 347, 387 and 201 of the IPC, with only two of the connected appeals being dismissed as withdrawn. All appeals were otherwise dismissed, and the appellants who had been out on bail were ordered to surrender to serve their sentences.

Lesson Learnt

Under Indian criminal law, if an accused is shown to have had a kidnapped or missing person in their custody shortly before that person is found dead, the burden shifts to the accused to explain what happened: silence or lack of explanation on a fact especially within their own knowledge can itself support a presumption of guilt for murder.

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

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