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| DB sets-aside life-imprisonment of father in alleged murder of two years old child | | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Mar 13: A Division Bench of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court Comprising Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi set-aside the life-imprisonment Shafi Mohd who was awarded life-imprisonment for alleged killing of his two years son.
On 30-10-2013, Police Post Indh received information through reliable sources that a minor namely Mohd Suleiman son of Mohd Shafi has died in suspicious circumstances and his dead body is lying at home. Accordingly, inquest proceeding under Section 174 CrPC was initiated in the case. During investigation, it came to fore that the child was poisoned by his father Mohd Shafi as he had strained relations with her wife and child of the deceased child, and he wanted to contract second marriage. On the basis of inquest proceeding, FIR Number 89/13 for the offence u/S 302 was registered in Police Station Gool and investigation started in the case.
DB after hearing both the sides observed that this Court found that though the prosecution may have succeeded in establishing that the death of the deceased child occurred due to administering of poison (organopharphorous) to child, yet there is no evidence on record to prove that the poison was administered by the appellant. The disclosure statement and the recovery of the bottle having left over poison have not been proved at all. In light of the evidence on record, it is difficult for us to believe the prosecution story that the appellant administered poison to the child, which he had brought in a small Nuvan bottle and that after administering the poison, the appellant kept the bottle with left over poison hidden in the fields, which the prosecution recovered after more than one month of the occurrence. As is rightly pointed by the Supreme Court in Bhupinder Singh's case, a person who administers poison to kill a person will not keep the left over poison, if any with him for months together and wait for the police to come and recover it from him. The natural conduct of such person is to destroy the evidence by throwing away the left over poison, if any, after administering the same to his victim.
With these observations, Division Bench do not find the judgment of conviction recorded by the trial Court in conformity with the evidence on record and in consonance with law. In the absence of ocular evidence, it was incumbent upon the prosecution to prove its case on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Law with regard to proving the case, which rests on circumstantial evidence, is well settled.
DB convinced that the prosecution has not established the circumstances forming an unbroken chain leading to the only hypothesis inconsistent with the innocence of the appellant. For the foregoing reasons, the Division Bench inclined to accept this appeal and reverse the judgment of conviction passed by the trial Court. As a result, the impugned order of sentence is also set aside. The appellant is directed to be set at liberty forthwith. —JNF |
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