(Judgment of the Court delivered by N.SESHASAYEE, J) Of the two accused convicted and sentenced in S.C.No.182 of 2013 on the file of the I Additional District and Sessions Judge, Vellore, that arose from Crime No.92 of 2003 of Katpadi Police Station, Vellore District. A-1 has come forward with this appeal. The details of the charge and the sentence imposed on him are hereunder :
Conviction imposed on the appellant by the trial Court Sentence imposed 120-B I.P.C.
Life imprisonment 440 I.P.C.
Rigorous imprisonment for 5 years and to pay a fine of Rs.1,000/- in default, to undergo simple imprisonment for one month 449 I.P.C.
Life imprisonment and to pay a fine of Rs.1,000/-
394 I.P.C.
Life imprisonment and to pay a fine of Rs.1,000/-
302 I.P.C.
Life imprisonment and to pay a fine of Rs.1000/-
397 I.P.C.
Rigorous imprisonment for seven years The sentences imposed on the appellant by the trial Court were directed to run concurrently.
1.1.One Suseela was found dead in her house with her throat slit opened and also with stab and other injuries. P.W.1, Ganesan, her husband, had been to Tiruchirapalli on the night of 24-02-2003, and returned home at about 4 a.m. on 26-02-2003. He went to his house and pressed the buzzer, but there was no reply. Therefore, he went to his neighbour Duraisamy's house where the latter was with his driver Bhaskar (P.W.22) and were preparing to go to Chennai by road. P.W.1 informed Duraisamy about what he had experienced and requested him that he may be permitted to make a call to his house through latter's telephone. P.W.1 then would call his house through Duraisamy's telephone but his wife did not attend the call. He would then request P.W.22 Bhaskar to jumb over the compound wall and to check the rear door of his house. Bhaskar reported that it was locked. Duraisamy told P.W.1 to rest for a while in his house and left for Chennai as they had scheduled. At about 7.00 a.m., P.W.1 would again enter his compound, came up to the front door and this time he pushed it. The door opened as it was not locked from inside. He went inside and found his wife dead in a pool of blood, near the back door of his house. He saw injuries on her body. He went to the bathroom where he found M.O.1 knife and M.O.2, a bangle of the deceased. He thereafter preferred a complaint, based on which Ext.P-22 FIR was registered. P.W.20 took up the investigation and completed the routine procedure of preparing the observation magazar (ExtP-2), rough sketch of the Scene of Occurrence (hereinafter will be referred to as SOC for the sake of brevity) (Ext.P.23), siezed the material objects that included as many as 23 materials objects, that included a couple of household articles, blood stained dress material, sample floor-tiles and the knife and bangle found in the bathroom. He however, could not fix the accused and the case headed as a clueless one. On 07.04.2016, P.W.21, the investigating officer who succeeded P.W.20, gave up his efforts and closed the case and filed a referred charge sheet. P.W.1 would then move this Court and had the investigation transferred to CBCID. On 21.01.2006, P.W.23 took over investigation. This is part one of the prosecution line of the narration.
1.2 Part II of the narrative commences with the accused voluntarily surrendering before P.W.6, the Village Administrative Officer on 17-05-2011. P.W.6 incidentally is a Village Administrative Officer of a village which is different from the one within whose jurisdiction the murder had taken place. This event is a little over eight years from the date of the crime and some five years since the respondent CBCID took over the investigation. According to P.W.6, the accused was apprehensive of an imminent arrest by the respondent police and hence surrendered. Now the investigation gained galloping pace.
1.3 It may now be stated that according to prosecution the accused was running a computer center to which P.W.1 and his wife would visit every month to talk to their son living abroad. Returning back to the narration, P.W.25 interrogated the accused during which he provided information about M.O.3 'thali' chain from P.W.11 Nirmala, to whom her son Vinodh, who is since dead, had given. This recovery of M.O.3 is significant to the prosecution's effort to prove the charge, and it would be discussed in greater detail later. He also recovered a bigger piece of gold ingot from P.W.8 and a smaller piece of gold ingot from P.W.9, both of which have been produced as M.O.6. The investigating officer forwarded all the material objects that he had seized to forensic science laboratory for biological investigation. After completing the investigation he laid the final report.
2.1.The prosecution relies only few circumstances, and they along with those facts that affect their believability are discussed below :
That Suseela was found dead on the morning of 26-02-2003. She was last seen alive at about 2 p.m. on the previous afternoon (25-02-2003) by one Nambi (P.W.3) who lives opposite to the house of P.W.1 and Suseela. P.W.5 is the milk-man who would depose that on the same day at about 5 p.m. he had come to deliver milk, but returned without delivering it as there was no response from the house. This might mean that Suseela might have been murdered between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. This, it attempts to corroborate with the evidence of P.W.17, the doctor who had conducted autopsy on the body of the victim of the crime, according to whose opinion the death might have happened between 18 to 24 hours prior to the postmortem. The postmortem itself commenced at 4.45 p.m. on 26-02-2003. This opinion coupled with the evidence of P.W.3 and P.W.5 make a strong indication about the time of the crime. This however, does not take the case forward, as the involvement of the accused in the crime still hangs in thin air.
Is the accused responsible for the murder of Suseela? There are couple of points that may have to be made clear at the outset. First, according to prosecution there were two who perpetrated the crime: One is the accused and the other was one Bhaskar, a friend of the accused. Bhaskar is now dead. Nowhere it is made evident by any of the witnesses or by other material evidence on record as to how this Bhaskar was involved in the crime. Second, none has seen the accused entered Suseela's house. The nearest that the prosecution could prove was that P.W.3, Nambi has testified as having seen Suseela with two men at about 2 p.m., on 25-02-2003. He did not go beyond to state who these two men were, nor the investigating agency strained itself to establish the identity of at least one of the two men when it arrested the accused through P.W.3.
The third circumstance is a combination of few facts:
Surrender of accused before P.W.6, the VAO on 17-05-2011 voluntarily, after eight years of the crime.
Recovery of M.O.3 thali chain that the deceased was wearing, followed by M.O.6 gold ingots, one piece from P.W.8 and another from P.W.9.
2.2. The theory that the accused surrendered some eight years after the crime and some five years after the respondent police, a premier investigating wing of the State police, had taken over investigation prima facie appears as the finest piece of artificial evidence one might come across as this is not in consonance with the ordinary course of human conduct which is relevant not only in assessing the behaviour of the witnesses but the conduct of the accused as well. Why he suddenly so surrendered? According to P.W.6, the accused apprehended arrest by the respondent police. However, P.W.25, the I.O. did not say that he suspected the involvement of the accused prior to the latter's dramatic surrender before P.W.6. And, the respondent was in charge of investigation, to repeat, for five years then. And, the accused is from the same locality too.
3.Turning to corroborative pieces of evidence to associate the accused to the crime, prosecution chiefly relies on the recovery of M.O.3 and M.O.6. Let its credibility, believability and its strength to establish appellant's involvement in the crime is now discussed:
(a) First to the recovery of M.O.3. According to P.W.25, the I.O and P.W.11, pursuant to the information that the appellant had provided the investigating officer during interrogation, appellant took him to P.W.12 Mani, who in turn had stated to the investigating officer that the thalli chain was handed over to one Vinodhkumar, now dead, who in turn had got the same pledged through his mother P.W.11 Nirmala. Nirmala would depose that her son Vinodkumar had handed over the said jewellery as having been given to him by the accused and required the same to be pledged. Nirmala accordingly pledged the jewellery and raised some money on it. Here Mani's evidence is not useful as he turned hostile, and to the extent the evidence that could be gathered from his testimony indicates that the accused, a relative of his, had only called him over phone sometime in March 2003, and from him he came to know that one Vinodhkumar was appellant's friend. Therefore, Mani had not seen the appellant contrary to what the prosecution claims. If Nirmala's (P.W.11) evidence is considered she has not deposed that appellant had personally come to hand over the jewellery to her or had made any personal request to raise a loan on it. She shows her finger to her son Vinodhkumar who was by then dead. This proves that P.W.11 had not seen the appellant. The all essential critical link, linking the M.O.3 to appellant is missing, notwithstanding the fact that M.O.3 was identified as belonging to Suseela both by P.W.1, her husband and P.W.2 Jayanthi, her family friend.
(b) M.O.6 comprises of two pieces of gold ingots of which one is bigger. First to the smaller one. This was recovered from P.W.9. The story-line of the prosecution is that the appellant had wanted to raise funds on two golden 'thali gundu' and he had approached his friend P.W.10, who in turn took him to latter's employer P.W.9 who in turn had advanced the money on the same. The point here is what was recovered was not what were pledged but only gold ingots stated to have been made by melting the jewel pledged. If it were pledged article, why and how could P.W.9 convert the pawned articles into ingots. Did he know beforehand that they would not be redeemed? And, how to believe that the ingot recovered from him was a product of melting the thali gundu of the dead? There are questions to be answered, but no answer comes forth from evidence. Surprisingly, P.W.1 has identified this ingot before the Court thus. While this Court struggles to get convinced, the prosecution appears to have no such issues.
(c) As to the bigger of the two ingots in M.O.6, this was recovered from P.W.8. He runs a jewellery shop. His evidence is to the effect that in May 2011, the respondent had come to his shop seeking two golden bangles but he handed over gold ingot instead. P.W.8 did not remember the appellant adequately enough to identify him. Significantly, no document to indicate that appellant had handed over the said jewel to P.W.8 was seized or produced. While the prosecution firmly believes that this recovery is clinching in its effort to prove the charge to this Court, it only exposes the chinks within.
4. There was one critical possibility available to the prosecution. It had seized M.O.1 knife from the bathroom of the house where Suseela was found dead. If it were smart enough it could have attempted to compare the fingerprints, if any, in the knife with that of the appellant. But here it missed what appears as a good opportunity.
5. There are gaping holes in prosecutions efforts. The chain of circumstantial evidence required to prove the charge which it has made available before Court has more breaks than continuity. This Court holds that prosecution has not been able to prove the charge, and it must be added that it has not even been able to cross even the half way mark towards proving it. What now flows as a necessary conclusion is to state the inevitable : That the charges against the appellant are not proved and that the appeal is required to be allowed.
6. In the result, the Criminal appeal is allowed and the conviction and sentence imposed on the appellant/accused by the learned I Additional District and Sessions Judge, Vellore in S.C.182 of 2013 dated 25.11.2016 is hereby set aside. The appellant/accused is acquitted of the charges levelled against him and he is directed to be set at liberty, forthwith, unless his presence is required in connection with any other case. Fine amount, if any, paid by the appellant, shall be refunded to the appellant.