Appeal Against Acquittal: Acquittal reinforcing presumption of innocence: interference only for compelling reasons

Once an order of acquittal has been made, the original presumption of innocence of the accused with which a criminal trials start is further reinforced by the order of acquittal and that being so the order can be reversed in appeal only for very substantial and compelling reasons.

At the same time, the High Court has full power even in an appeal under section 417 CRPC (new section 378 of CRPC) to review the evidence upon which the order of the trial court is based and to reject the conclusions reached by the trial court in substantial reasons for doing so do exist in a given case

In the present case, the accused was charged under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code for having caused the death of a man by plunging a spear into his chest with considerable force. There were 3 eyewitnesses who were all relatives of the deceased. The Sessions Judge rejected their evidence on the ground that they had spoken untruths about an incident immediately previous to the occurrence in question and that if they could falsely involve him in the previous incident it was possible they might have implicated him in the incident of murder also only out of the vindictiveness. He held that no confidence could be deposed in their evidence and in the absence of independent corroborative support the accused had to be given the benefit of doubt and had to be acquitted. On appeal, the High Court minutely reviewed the evidence of these 3 witnesses and considered that the variations and discrepancies in their evidence on which the sessions judge had relied for rejecting their evidence were only of a minor and trifling character and could be explained by the laps of over 2 years between the occurrence and the time when the evidence was given. The High Court accepted the evidence of these witnesses and set aside the order of acquittal convicted the accused under section 304 of the Indian Penal Code. The accused appealed to the Supreme Court.

As the court below had expressed divergent opinions on the credibility of the prosecution witnesses the Supreme Court carefully went into the whole evidence and came to the conclusion that the view taken by the High Court was correct and that there was no good reason for distrusting the evidence given by those witnesses. The Court further held that the sessions judge had held in taking an exaggerated and hyper-technical view of the minor discrepancies and in distrusting the evidence of the prosecution witnesses merely because they were relatives of the deceased. They were the only persons present at the attack and other persons who had not been examined had arrived on the scene after the attack was over. That being so non-Production of inconsequential witnesses would not be considered as deliberate withholding of independent witnesses, and the Sessions Judge was wrong in coming to that conclusion.

Held:-

Under these circumstances, there were strong and compelling reasons for the exercise of its power of interference by the High Court and that power has been exercised in a correct manner. The Judgment of the High Court was upheld and the appeal was dismissed.

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