A Bench of Justices R M Lodha and J S Khehar said it is difficult to ascertain the motive rummaging through the evidence since it lurks in the mind of the individual.
“The proof of motive is not a sine qua non before a person can be held guilty of the commission of a crime. Motive being a matter of the mind, is more often than not, difficult to establish through evidence,” the court said in a recent verdict.
The Bench concurred with other apex court rulings made in this regard and dismissed two separate appeals, through a common judgment, against Himachal Pradesh High Court’s verdict filed by two brothers Deepak and Dheeraj Verma, who were awarded life imprisonment by trial court in Chamba.
Extensive evidence
“In the present case, there is extensive oral evidence in the nature of the statements of three eyewitnesses out of which one is a stamped witness, that appellant-accused No 2 Deepak was an active participant in the crime in question. There is also the dying declaration of Kamini Verma (deceased) implicating both the accused,” the court said.
Counsel for Deepak had alleged that even if the prosecution’s story that rejection of marriage proposal of Dheeraj with Kamini could be accepted, it did not establish the case against him.
“It is only on account of the rejection of the marriage proposal that Dheeraj and Deepak, the appellants accused, as an act of retaliation and vengeance, jointly committed the offence in question.
It is also necessary to notice that no reason whatsoever emerges from the evidence produced before the trial court why the family of the deceased Kamini Verma and/or Rakesh Kumar would falsely implicate the accused-appellants,” the Bench concluded.
Both brothers of the family were sentenced to life term by the court for killing Kamini and her uncle Rakesh in July, 2003, as they were alleged to have been enraged as Deepak who used to give tuitions to Kamini Verma could not marry her.
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