New Delhi, Jun 4 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Wednesday acquitted a man of his friend's murder and held no clear motive was attributed to the crime which took place in 2010.
A bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma observed the trial court and the high court held Vaibhav guilty based on circumstantial evidence without attributing motive to the crime.
The police claimed Vaibhav fatally shot his friend by the service revolver of his father.
The convict, however, claimed the victim, namely, Mangesh accidentally shot himself.
Vaibhav said he acted out of fear and cleaned up the crime scene aside and removed the dead body.
The bench said, "We hereby conclude that the high court has erred in arriving at the finding of guilt and in upholding the verdict of the trial court. The circumstantial evidence on record is not consistent and leaves a reasonable possibility of an alternate outcome i.e. of innocence of the appellant on the charges of murder and illegal usage of firearms."
His conviction under Sections 302 (murder) IPC and a provision of the Arms Act was set aside.
The bench, however, upheld his conviction under Section 201 IPC (causing disappearance of evidence) and sentenced him to the period already undergone.
Justice Sharma, who authored the verdict, said a complete absence of motive though not conclusive was a relevant factor which weighed in the accused's favour.
"No doubt, the final effect of such absence on the outcome of the case shall depend upon the quality and weight of surrounding evidence. In the present case, the testimonies of prosecution witnesses have invariably revealed that the appellant and the deceased were friends and there was no ill-will between them. Even the father of the deceased has testified to that effect," the judge said.
The bench noted the relevance of motive in a case of homicide was a subject of prolonged discussion.
"Ordinarily, in cases involving direct evidence of the commission of crime, motive has little role to play as presence or absence of motive is immaterial if the commission of the crime stands proved through other evidence. Even otherwise, motiveless crimes are not unknown to the society. However, in cases purely based on circumstantial evidence, the absence of motive could raise serious questions and might even render the chain of evidence as doubtful," it said.
On the subsequent conduct of Vaibhav of tampering with the crime scene, the bench said it was consistent with the theory of accidental death.
"That his act of removal of the dead body and concealment of articles was a result of fear of his father - is quite natural. A young boy studying in first year of college, with no criminal background and with no motive in sight, would certainly have become scared on seeing that his friend has accidentally shot himself in the living room of his house with the pistol belonging to his father and is lying in a pool of blood," it said.
His act though punishable by law, the court noted, was not unnatural and couldn't amount to murder.
The subsequent acts of cleaning up the crime scene and making false enquiries amounted to disappearance of evidence and raised grave suspicion against the convict.
"However, mere suspicion, no matter how grave, cannot take the place of proof in a criminal trial. The suspicion ought to have been substantiated by undeniable, reliable, unequivocal, consistent and credible circumstantial evidence, which does not leave the probability of any other theory," it held.
The theory put across by the appellant was found to be "fairly probable", supported by medical evidence including the examination of the bullet injury and trajectory.
The bench further held that the finding of the courts below was not supported by medical evidence.
The accused and the victim were students at Bagla Homeopathy Medical College in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra and often commuted together on their two-wheelers.
On September 16, 2010, they left college together on Mangesh's scooter, had tea at a stall and came to Vaibhav’s house in the afternoon.
When Mangesh’s father discovered late evening that his son had not reached home, he looked for him and eventually lodged a missing report.
Mangesh's body was discovered the following day and Vaibhav was booked as he was last in the victim's company.