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Union of India & Ors. v. Dafadar Kartar Singh & Anr.

Criminal Appeal · 2019 INSC 1340Decided 9 Dec 2019
Criminal Appeal Nos. 3-4 of 2015
Justice L. Nageswara Rao · Justice Hemant Gupta

Background

An Army soldier, Dafadar Kartar Singh, was convicted by a Summary Court Martial for breaking at night into the residential quarters of a fellow soldier's wife, who was home alone with a young boy during a frightening night-time intrusion. He was sentenced to seven months' rigorous imprisonment, dismissal from service, and reduction in rank. The Armed Forces Tribunal later acquitted him, mainly on the ground that the complainant's identification of the intruder was inconsistent, and the Union of India appealed to the Supreme Court.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court held that an acquittal can only be overturned for very substantial and compelling reasons, such as where the lower forum ignored material evidence. It found that the Tribunal had fixated on minor inconsistencies in the complainant's testimony while completely ignoring strong corroborating evidence: the young boy's eyewitness account, three other witnesses who placed the respondent at the scene, medical evidence of fresh abrasions on his arms, and a witness who recognized a distinctive perfume on him matching the intruder's trail. Concluding that the evidence as a whole clearly established guilt, the Court set aside the Tribunal's acquittal, restored the Summary Court Martial's findings and penalties of dismissal and rank reduction, but reduced the prison sentence to time already served.

Lesson Learnt

An appellate or review body cannot reverse a conviction by highlighting small inconsistencies in one witness's account while disregarding the weight of the overall corroborating evidence; courts reviewing acquittals must look at the evidence as a whole, not cherry-pick contradictions.

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

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