Suresh v. State Represented by Inspector of Police
Background
The appellant was convicted by the trial court and had his conviction upheld by the Madras High Court for allegedly pouring kerosene on his wife and setting her on fire in September 2008, causing her death about three weeks later. The wife gave three different accounts before she died: twice immediately after the incident (to a doctor and to police) she said she caught fire accidentally while cooking, but six days later, in a statement recorded by a Judicial Magistrate treated as her dying declaration, she blamed her husband. The conviction rested substantially on this dying declaration and on testimony from the wife's parents.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court found the prosecution's case riddled with inconsistencies: the wife's own explanation for her earlier accidental-fire statements (that she lied because her husband was present) was undermined by a doctor's evidence that the husband was in fact present with her at the hospital when her later statement was recorded too, and by evidence that the husband had himself tried to douse the fire and take her for treatment despite his own 40% physical disability. Medical evidence showed no kerosene smell on her body and no external injuries besides burns, and the physical evidence of a kerosene can allegedly recovered from the scene was undermined because the seizure witnesses turned hostile and denied any kerosene smell at the site. The Court also noted a prior family feud (a criminal case the appellant's brother had filed against the wife's father) that raised a possibility of the dying declaration being tutored. Applying the principle that a doubtful or inconsistent dying declaration needs corroboration before it can sustain a conviction, the Court held the prosecution's case fell short, gave the appellant the benefit of doubt, acquitted him, and ordered his immediate release from jail.
Lesson Learnt
A dying declaration, though powerful evidence, cannot alone sustain a conviction when it contradicts the deceased's own earlier consistent statements and lacks independent corroboration. Courts must scrutinise the surrounding facts, not treat a dying declaration as automatically conclusive.