Last-Seen Evidence Insufficient: Allahabad High Court Acquits Two in Murder Case

A bench of Justice Siddharth and Justice Jai Krishna Upadhyay heard an appeal challenging convictions in a 1992 kidnapping and murder prosecution, wherein the trial court had convicted four accused under Sections 364 and 302/34 IPC and sentenced them to life imprisonment and other terms. The appeal contested the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence, handwriting proof of a note, delay in lodging the missing report and the viability of the last‑seen testimony relied upon by the prosecution.

The High Court allowed the appeal insofar as two surviving appellants were concerned, set aside the trial court judgment and acquitted Anoop Singh and Ram Kumar of all charges. The Court held that the prosecution failed to prove a complete chain of circumstances beyond reasonable doubt and that the last‑seen evidence was legally unsustainable given the temporal gap between the last sighting and discovery of the body. The Court, in its reasoning, observed: "Where the evidence is of a circumstantial nature, the circumstances from which the conclusion of guilt is to be drawn should, in the first instance, be fully established, and all the facts so established should be consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused. Again, the circumstances should be of a conclusive nature and tendency and they should be such as to exclude every hypothesis but the one proposed to be proved. In other words, there must be a chain of circumstances so far complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for a conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and it must be such as to show that within all human probability the act must have been done by the accused (vide Hanumat Govind Nargundkar & Anr. V. State of Madhya Pradesh, AIR 1952 SC 343; Sharad Birdhichand Sarda V. State of Maharashtra, (1984) 4 SCC 116)..." The Court further noted that "the last seen theory is legally unsustainable in this case" and concluded that "the benefit of doubt would have to be extended to the accused‑appellants."

Background The prosecution alleged that on 7 February 1992 Anoop Singh and Ram Kumar kidnapped Chandrapal (also referred to as Chandraprakash) from his home in Saharanpur and that the deceased was murdered near Ballabhgarh railway station on 8 February 1992. The informant was the deceased's brother, Baldev Singh, and the mother of the deceased's wife, Jasmati, and several neighbours provided evidence of meetings and movements. Investigators recovered a note (parcha) alleged to have been written by one accused, examined the body and conducted a post‑mortem which found ante‑mortem head injuries but stated that injuries could have resulted from a fall from a moving train and that death could have occurred on 9 February 1992.

At trial twelve prosecution witnesses were examined. The defence argued that the missing report was filed with delay, handwriting on the parcha lacked reliable proof, the purported motive (Rs. 7,500) was doubtful and contradicted, medical evidence did not conclusively establish homicidal death, and the case rested on weak last‑seen circumstantial evidence. The State relied on witness testimony identifying the accused with the deceased at public places, proof of the parcha, and the alleged motive.

The High Court examined settled legal principles governing circumstantial evidence and last‑seen testimony, citing Supreme Court precedents including Sharad Birdhichand Sarda and subsequent authorities that require a chain of evidence that excludes all reasonable hypotheses of innocence. The Court found several evidentiary gaps: uncertain handwriting proof for the note, voluntary departure of the deceased with the accused, discrepancies in witness statements including timing, a significant time gap between the last sighting (evening of 7 February) and recovery of the body (noon of 9 February), and a post‑mortem opinion that allowed for accidental death by fall from a train. Applying the governing tests, the Court held the last‑seen circumstance did not afford the necessary proximity of time and place to exclude third‑party involvement, and therefore the prosecution failed to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Consequently, the appeal was allowed and the convictions of the two surviving appellants were set aside. Two other appellants died during the pendency of the appeal and proceedings against them stood abated. The Court directed transmission of the record to the trial court and allowed a professional fee of Rs.15,000 to the amicus‑appointed counsel.

Case Details: Case No.: CRIMINAL APPEAL No. - 4445 of 2005 Case Title: Balak Ram And Others Versus State of U.P. Appearances: For the Petitioner(s): Akhtar Ali; Chetan Chatterjee (appointed by High Court Legal Service Committee and also appearing as amicus curiae); G.K. Singh; N.C. Tripathi; Pankaj Tyagi; Rishikesh Tripathi; S.K. Singh; Shakeel Ahmad Azmi; Smt. Archana Tyagi; Smt. Nayan Shri; Sudhanshu Srivastava; Yogesh Srivastava For the Respondent(s): Government Advocate