State (NCT of Delhi) vs. Rajender Singh & Anr.
Background
In January 2005, one Rakesh Kumar Gupta was shot at his shop in New Kondli, Delhi, suffering three gunshot wounds. He named the two respondents, whom he knew, as his attackers, alleging a long-running family dispute involving a criminal case and demands for money to compromise it. The trial court acquitted both accused in 2017, finding the injured witness's account riddled with contradictions across multiple statements, doubting the medical and forensic evidence, and noting the absence of any independent eyewitness despite the shooting occurring in a busy commercial area. The State appealed the acquittal.
Decision Breakdown
The High Court carefully re-examined all of the complainant's four statements and found significant, unexplained changes in his account of who fired which shot and why, along with a hospital record that initially attributed the shooting to "unknown persons" rather than the named accused. The Court also found the claimed eyewitnesses had likely not actually seen the assailants' faces (the attackers reportedly wore monkey caps at night), and noted unresolved doubts about how the forensic cartridges reached the laboratory, including a suspicious insertion in the FSL's record register. Applying the well-established rule that an appellate court should be very reluctant to reverse an acquittal unless the trial court's view was simply not a reasonable one to take, the Court held the acquittal was a plausible view on this evidence and declined to disturb it, dismissing the State's appeal.
Lesson Learnt
Once a trial court acquits an accused after weighing conflicting evidence, an appeals court will not simply substitute its own opinion: it will only overturn the acquittal if the trial court's reasoning was clearly unreasonable or ignored the evidence, reflecting the strong protection the law gives to the presumption of innocence.