'Blind murder': Allahabad High Court acquits three men serving life sentence for 38 years

Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court has acquitted three men serving life imprisonment for the last 38 years in a 1982 case, observing that the case was one of a “blind murder” committed by someone else.

A bench of Justices J J Munir and Sanjiv Kumar also said the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.

"The presence of prosecution witnesses at the spot is highly doubtful. It appears that they had not seen the incident. They reached the spot when the deceased had already died and after other villagers had already reached there," the court said.

The crime took place at a village under the Soraon police station area of Prayagraj.

Setting aside the 1987 conviction of 11 people, including the three men, the court said, "The prosecution had utterly failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt and the trial judge has not appreciated the evidence on record in the right perspective and reached a wrong conclusion regarding the appellants' guilt upon conjectures and improper appreciation of evidence." Eight out of 11 appellants died during the pendency of the appeals.

The informant's case was that his brother was beaten to death by the assailants/ appellants on July 8, 1982. It was alleged that the informant was given a death threat if he filed an FIR or informed police about his brother's death.

The FIR was registered at Soraon police station and investigation commenced against all 11 accused. The trial court on April 13, 1987 found the accused guilty under various IPC sections including 302 (murder) and sentenced them to life imprisonment.

Subsequently, the trial court's order was challenged by all the accused.

The high court in its judgment dated December 18 observed that there were major contradictions in ocular and medical evidence.

The appeals were heard at the behest of three surviving appellants/ accused - Amrit Lal, Harish Chandra and Kallu.

Noting that the victim died due to the injuries inflicted upon him, the court observed that the burden of proving the case beyond reasonable doubt was on the prosecution.

Regarding testimonies of the deceased's brother and uncle, who informed the brother about the incident, the court noted that there was no information as to who informed the uncle about the thrashing of the deceased.

It held that an unknown person who informed the deceased's uncle would have informed the brother straight had he wanted the information to reach him and knew him.

The bench noted that from the time the brother of the deceased was informed till the time he gathered the villagers and reached the place of occurrence must have taken at least an hour. The court held that it was not possible that 11 assailants beating the deceased for an hour with the intention to kill him would leave only 10 injuries on his body.

The court also noted that after receiving information that his brother was being beaten, a man of ordinary prudence would not go without weapons and would take the shortest route. Instead, the informant and his uncle went empty handed and took a longer route which raises suspicion, it said.