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Uttam vs The State of Maharashtra

Criminal Appeal · 2022 INSC 634Decided 2 Jun 2022
Criminal Appeal No. 485 of 2012
B.R. Gavai · Hima Kohli

Background

The appellant's wife, Pushpabai, died of severe burn injuries in 1995, a day after being found on fire at home. The prosecution alleged the appellant, suspected of an affair, poured kerosene on her and set her alight after she confronted him and asked for a divorce. Two written "dying declarations" were recorded from her shortly after the incident by an investigating officer and a magistrate, and two family members (her father and the marriage mediator) also later testified that she had separately told them, orally, how the incident occurred. The trial court convicted the appellant of murder based on all four accounts, and the Bombay High Court, though it discarded the two written dying declarations due to procedural flaws in how they were recorded, still upheld the conviction relying on the oral testimony of the two family witnesses plus a chemical report showing kerosene traces.

Decision Breakdown

The Supreme Court found that the oral testimonies of the father (P.W.2) and mediator (P.W.12), both "interested" witnesses, gave accounts that directly contradicted each other and the discarded written declarations on the very motive for the crime: neither mentioned the alleged extramarital affair the prosecution otherwise relied on, and both raised dowry demands never mentioned elsewhere. Both witnesses also admitted their versions were never given to police during investigation and surfaced for the first time at trial. Applying precedent that oral dying declarations must be treated with special caution since the maker cannot be cross-examined, the Court held it was unsafe to convict solely on this contradictory, unsubstantiated oral testimony once the more contemporaneous written declarations had already been discarded. The conviction was quashed and the appellant was acquitted and ordered released.

Lesson Learnt

When multiple dying declarations by the same victim conflict with one another, courts must scrutinise them carefully rather than simply falling back on whichever version survives: an oral dying declaration from an interested witness, especially one first disclosed only at trial and inconsistent with the discarded written versions, is too weak a foundation on its own to sustain a murder conviction.

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

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