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Taqdir vs The State of Haryana

Criminal Appeal · 2022 INSC 248Decided 2 Mar 2022
Criminal Appeal No.1537 of 2018
Uday Umesh Lalit · S. Ravindra Bhat · Pamidighantam Sri Narasimha · Uday Umesh Lalit along with Justices S. Ravindra Bhat

Background

The appellant Taqdir had contested and lost panchayat elections against one Rakesh alias Kala and allegedly bore a grudge against him. Rakesh was later shot dead by four assailants who stormed into his hospital room, an incident captured on the hospital's CCTV cameras. A trial court convicted 10 of 27 accused, including Taqdir (as the alleged mastermind) and the four assailants (Kuldeep alias Bhandari, Anil, Jyoti Prakash and Arun), and the Punjab & Haryana High Court upheld the convictions of Taqdir and the four assailants while acquitting five others. Taqdir appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, while the four assailants filed separate Special Leave Petitions against theirs.

Decision Breakdown

For the four assailants, the Court found the CCTV footage (preserved on a hard disk and transferred to a pendrive and CD, duly certified under Section 65-B of the Indian Evidence Act) clearly showed them entering the hospital armed, going into the deceased's room, and fleeing, corroborated by the injuries the deceased suffered, and rejected the argument that the footage was inadmissible merely because the original hard disk itself was not played in court; their Special Leave Petitions were accordingly dismissed. For Taqdir, however, the Court held the evidence against him was "completely inadequate" to sustain a conspiracy conviction: the prosecution's case rested only on the "slender thread" that he had lost an election to the deceased and there was no evidence linking him to the actual assailants, especially since the alleged link-man (absconding accused Mukesh) was later tried separately and acquitted, and a key prosecution witness had turned hostile. The Court therefore gave Taqdir the benefit of the doubt, set aside his conviction, and ordered his release unless wanted in another case.

Lesson Learnt

A conspiracy conviction cannot rest on motive alone (such as an election rivalry) without concrete evidence linking the accused to those who actually committed the crime; by contrast, well-certified CCTV/electronic evidence under Section 65-B of the Evidence Act can be relied upon by courts even if the original storage device itself is not physically played in court, so long as the certified copies are properly proved.

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

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