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The State of Odisha v. Banabihari Mohapatra and Anr.

Special Leave Petition (Criminal) · 2021 INSC 85Decided 12 Feb 2021
Special Leave Petition (Criminal) No. 1156 of 2021
Justice Indira Banerjee · Justice Hemant Gupta

Background

A man died after apparently suffering an electric shock at a shop run by the accused. The deceased's wife alleged in the FIR that the accused (the shop owner and his son) had murdered her husband by administering poison and then applying electric shock, allegedly over an unpaid loan. The Sessions Court acquitted both accused after trial for lack of evidence, and the Odisha High Court dismissed the State's application for leave to appeal against the acquittal on the ground of a 41-day delay in filing it. The State of Odisha challenged this dismissal before the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court examined the underlying evidence in detail despite the case reaching it only on a delay-based rejection, and found that the prosecution's case was built almost entirely on suspicion: there were no eyewitnesses, three of nine witnesses turned hostile, the alleged loan motive appeared nowhere in the original FIR and surfaced only later, and the post-mortem report itself suggested the death could have been accidental (the deceased was intoxicated and may have accidentally touched a live wire). Applying the settled principle that circumstantial evidence must form a complete chain pointing only to guilt and be inconsistent with innocence, and that courts are reluctant to overturn an acquittal except in cases of perversity, the Court held the Trial Court had rightly acquitted the accused and found no error warranting interference. The Special Leave Petition was dismissed.

Lesson Learnt

An acquittal carries a reinforced presumption of innocence, and an appellate court will not overturn it unless the trial court's findings were perverse; suspicion, however strong, can never substitute for proof, and a motive that is absent from the original police complaint but appears only later in evidence is treated with caution.

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

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