12 years after life term, SC acquits Tamil Nadu man of burning wife to death | India News
NEW DELHI: Twelve years after being convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly burning his wife to death in Tamil Nadu, apex court has acquitted the man after noting that there was inconsistency in dying declarations of the deceased and also there was no other evidence to prove his culpability.
A bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Ahsanuddin Amanullah said that conviction could not happen if there were major contradictions in the dying declaration of the deceased and there was no other substantial evidence against the accused.
“If a dying declaration is surrounded by doubt or there are inconsistent dying declarations by the deceased, then courts must look for corroborative evidence to find out which dying declaration is to be believed. This will depend upon the facts of the case and courts are required to act cautiously in such cases. The matter at hand is one such case. In the present case, the deceased had given two statements which are totally different from her subsequent statements including the statement made before judicial magistrate, which has been considered a dying declaration based on which the appellant has been convicted,” the bench said.
In this case, the deceased, in her first statement did not blame her husband and said she caught fire while cooking but later on told the magistrate that her husband had poured kerosene on her and set her on fire. After examining statements of other witnesses including the doctors who examined her, the court said there was no smell of kerosene emanating from her body when she was brought to the hospital and did not give credence to her dying declarations.
“There is no doubt regarding the well settled position of law that a dying declaration is an important piece of evidence and a conviction can be made by relying solely on a dying declaration alone as it holds immense importance in criminal law. However, such reliance should be placed after ascertaining quality of the dying declaration and considering the facts of a case,” the bench said.
