Sudru v. The State of Chhattisgarh
Background
The appellant Sudru was convicted of murdering his own son, Ajit, following a domestic quarrel with his wife Janki Bai. After the quarrel, Janki Bai left the house with her two younger children, leaving Ajit alone with the appellant overnight; the next morning she found Ajit dead, with injuries to his neck suggesting strangulation. The Trial Court convicted the appellant under Section 302 IPC and sentenced him to life imprisonment, a conviction upheld by the High Court of Chhattisgarh, leading to this appeal before the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the conviction. Although the key prosecution witnesses (including the deceased's mother) turned hostile at trial, the Court held that credible parts of a hostile witness's testimony can still be relied upon and need not be discarded wholesale. Since the prosecution established that only the appellant and the deceased were alone in the room that night (a fact that survived cross-examination), the burden shifted to the appellant under Section 106 of the Evidence Act to explain the death, which he failed to do, offering only a false explanation (that the child died of illness) that was contradicted by medical evidence of strangulation and head injury. The Court held this combination of circumstances was sufficient to sustain the conviction.
Lesson Learnt
When a person is the only one shown to have been with someone who then dies or is injured under suspicious circumstances, the law places a special burden on that person to explain what happened: silence or a false explanation can itself become evidence against them. A witness turning "hostile" in court does not automatically wipe out the value of everything they said.