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State of Punjab vs. Kewal Krishan

Criminal Appeal · 2023 INSC 583Decided 21 Jun 2023
Criminal Appeal No. 2128 of 2014
B.V. Nagarathna · Manoj Misra

Background

Kewal Krishan was convicted of murder by a trial court based on circumstantial evidence: he was allegedly last seen with the deceased the evening before the body was found, he allegedly made an extra-judicial confession to a Panchayat member, and a knife was recovered based on his disclosure. The Punjab & Haryana High Court overturned the conviction and acquitted him, doubting the prosecution's timeline of his arrest and finding the "last seen" witness unreliable, the confession unconvincing, and the knife recovery unconnected to the crime (no forensic report linked it to blood). The State appealed this acquittal to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court reiterated the settled principle that it will not interfere with an acquittal unless the High Court's reasoning was perverse or resulted in a grave miscarriage of justice: mere possibility of a different view is not enough. Examining each circumstance, the Court agreed that the "last seen" evidence was inconclusive given the large time gap between when the deceased was last seen and when the body was found (with autopsy findings suggesting death could have occurred later than the prosecution's timeline), that the extra-judicial confession was weak evidence with no explanation of why the accused would confide in that witness, and that the knife recovery lacked forensic corroboration. Since the circumstantial evidence did not form a complete, unbroken chain excluding every hypothesis of innocence, and the burden-shifting rule under Section 106 of the Evidence Act only applies once the prosecution has first made out a prima facie case, the Court held the High Court's view was a plausible one it should not disturb. The appeal was dismissed and the acquittal upheld.

Lesson Learnt

A conviction based on circumstantial evidence requires an unbroken chain of proven facts that excludes every reasonable possibility other than the accused's guilt: weak links like an unexplained extra-judicial confession or an unverified time gap in "last seen" evidence can be fatal to the prosecution's case, and appellate courts will not reverse a High Court's acquittal merely because another view was possible.

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

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