The Allahabad High Court recently comprising of a bench of Justice Pradeep Kumar Srivastava observed that the applicant must be granted bail bail if he is accused solely on the basis of speculation and suspicion. (Mohd. Sharib Vs. State of U.P)
The bench noted that when the case against the accused is solely made of circumstantial evidences, there must be a link that indicates guilt. Pure suspicion and speculation without any intention of guilt cannot make a person ‘guilty’ of an offence and bail must be granted to such a person.
Facts of the case
On the night of 09.10.2018, an Ex-MLA was found dead in his house at Bulandshahar. The deceased was found lying on the bed in bleeding condition and there was gunshot injury on his head. The informant suspected that some unknown person killed him and lodged FIR against unknown. On the basis of FIR, the investigation started, the inquest report was prepared and post-mortem of dead body was undertaken. Investigating Officer investigated the offence and finding no evidence submitted Final Report. Re-investigation was conducted by CBCID. Evidence was collected and charge-sheet was filed against the accused applicant. The present application is filed by the accused applicant on the grounds that there was no evidence to accuse him.
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Contention of the parties
The learned counsel for the applicant submitted that he was not named in the FIR nor was he suspected. It was submitted that in order to implicate the applicant, evidence was manipulated, false evidence was created and certain witnesses were re- examined who made improvement to implicate the accused applicant. He was doing the work of guard and was for the protection of the deceased. There is no reliable evidence against him in support of the police version.
Learned Senior counsel appearing for the informant and learned AGA for the State have strongly opposed the bail application and have submitted that the matter was investigated and after collecting enough evidence it was found that the accused applicant committed murder in a very planned way. It has been further submitted that there is extra judicial confession made to witness Mohd. Khalid who has stated to the IO that while he was on his saw applicant Sharib and servant Sajid came there and made a confessional statement that out of greed and on the saying of Anas, the son of deceased, they killed the deceased. Further submission is that there are other evidence on record which is in the nature of circumstances which conclusively indicated the involvement of the accused applicant in the commission of the offence.
It was further submitted that the accused and deceased slept in the same room and the accused had the key to such a room. It was also submitted that the murder was committed by the pistol which was in the name of the wife of the deceased and in the evidence, it has come that pistol was always with the accused applicant.
The learned counsel submitted that the accused applicant was having illicit relation with the wife of the deceased and because of that he planned the murder of the deceased and caused his death. However, no evidence was found in support of this claim.
Courts observation & Judgment
The judge heard both the parties and observed that initially, none of the witnesses had stated anything against the accused. Final Report was submitted by IO concluding that no evidence of murder was found and the SHO made a written request for accepting the FR. Thus, it is clear that after the first round of investigation, nothing was found against the applicant. In the statement recorded, it was observed that the witnesses have only expressed their suspicion and the applicant was accused on the basis of the statements of two other persons who are the co-accused and thus much reliance cannot be placed.
The bench noted, “It is pertinent to mention that the observations aforesaid made by the IO are based on speculation and suspicion. Moreover, the case against the accused applicant is totally based on the circumstantial evidence that he was sleeping in the same room with the deceased. This fact does not appear to be supported by any believable evidence or eyewitness account.”
The court considering the facts and circumstances of the case noted, “the accused applicant is not named in FIR; no motive was assigned to him for causing death of the deceased; there is no eyewitness account supporting the allegation against the applicant; even suspicion was not expressed against him in the FIR even though FIR was lodged by the brother which was lodged on fifth day after the date of incident and there was sufficient time with the informant for making allegations, or at least expressing suspicion against the applicant. The case is totally based on circumstantial evidence and it is difficult at this stage to say that the circumstances alleged against the applicant, if taken together and linked, form a chain of circumstance conclusively leading to an inference that the accused-applicant must have committed the said offence. Apparently unrelated circumstances if joined together must form a chain of circumstances indicating the guilt. I find at this stage that such link is missing”.
Thus, the bail application was allowed.
source ; .latestlaws.com/
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