Vishwajeet Kerba Masalkar vs The State of Maharashtra
Background
The appellant was convicted of murdering his mother, wife, and two-year-old daughter in Pune in 2012, allegedly because he wanted to leave his wife to marry another woman. He was sentenced to death, and both the trial court and the Bombay High Court upheld the conviction and sentence based mainly on the testimony of an injured neighbour and recoveries of a hammer and blood-stained clothes.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court found the sole eyewitness's testimony unreliable: his statement to police was recorded six days after the incident despite evidence he was conscious and able to speak earlier, no neighbours corroborated his account, and he himself admitted learning the "facts" from the police rather than witnessing them directly. Treating the case as one of circumstantial evidence, the Court applied the well-established "panchsheel" test requiring a complete, unbroken chain of proof excluding every hypothesis except guilt, and found the recovery of the murder weapon (from an open canal, and improbably still blood-stained after being submerged for three days) and other recoveries similarly unreliable. Concluding that suspicion, however strong, cannot substitute for proof beyond reasonable doubt, the Court acquitted the appellant and ordered his release.
Lesson Learnt
A criminal conviction, especially one carrying the death penalty, cannot rest on suspicion or a chain of circumstances with unexplained gaps and contradictions; the prosecution must prove guilt through a complete, credible chain of evidence that excludes every other reasonable explanation.