The Supreme Court has held that the conviction of accused will depend on the oral testimony of witnesses. It added that witnesses without sufficient corroboration, are not be sustainable.

A bench comprising of Justice BR Gavai,  Justice Vikram Nath and Justice Sanjay Karol made the above statement while they were setting aside the judgment of the eChhattisgarh High Court which upheld conviction and life imprisonment to three appellants for the offence of murder.

The bench said that the the long taken for lodging the FIR, that too without any names been mentioned in the contemporaneous documents, there lies a great possibility of fault acquisition  .

The appellants, and his co-acquaints have been charged for entering the house of the deceased with deadly weapons,assaulting him, which led to his death.

As per the appellants argued before the top court arguing that their names had not been mentioned in any of the documents such as the merg panchnama, inquest panchnama and spot panchnama whereas the names of other accused were mentioned.

The appellant has also apprised the Court that the inordinate delay in registering the First Information Report (FIR) had not been explained by the prosecution.

According to the appellants, the conviction was based on non-trust worthy testimony which were not sustainable unless there was corroboration of their testimony. 

The prosecution, however submitted that all three eyewitnesses had clearly implicated the appellants.

It was also stated that merely because the witnesses were interested witnesses cannot be ground to discard their testimonies as long as their evidence was found to be trustworthy, reliable and cogent. 

The argument as to delay in lodging the FIR was also rebutted by the prosecution which said that it was not a strong ground since their case had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

While examining the issues, the bench said that in cases where evidence from witnesses is partly reliable and partly unreliable, the Court is required to be circumspect and separate the chaff from the grain to seek further corroboration from reliable testimony. 

Considering the lack of corroboration in the case at hand, the court set aside the decision of the High Court as well as the trial court and acquitted the appellants.

The Supreme Court of India on Wednesday held that conviction based on uncorroborated testimony of accomplice to the crime is untenable as the same is against the provision of law.

The observation came in while Supreme Court was hearing criminal appeal filed by the convicts accused of kidnapping and murder of ex-MLA of Tamil Nadu assembly. The prosecution story is that M.K. Balan, who was an Ex. M.L.A. was reported to be missing by his son after he went for his morning walk on 30.12.2001. On carrying out inquiry, the police received information and subsequently accused were arrested wherein they confessed the kidnapping and subsequent death of the MLA.

The case was heard by a three-judge bench following a reference from a division bench which gave the split verdict in the case on the issue of difference of opinion on section 133 and Section 114 of Evidence Act.

The bench comprising of Justice RF Nariman, Justice KM Joseph & Justice V. Ramasubramanian, placing reliance on recent judgement passed in K. Hashim vs. State of Tamil Nadu, wherein it was held that :-

• It is not necessary that there should be independent confirmation of every material circumstance in the sense that the independent evidence in the case, apart from the testimony of the complainant or the accomplice, should in itself be sufficient to sustain conviction.
• All that is required is that there must be some additional evidence rendering it probable that the story of the accomplice (or complainant) is true and that it is reasonably safe to act upon it.
• Secondly, the independent evidence must not only make it safe to believe that the crime was committed but must in some way reasonably connect or tend to connect the accused with it by confirming in some material particular the testimony of the accomplice or complainant that the accused committed the crime. This does not mean that the corroboration as to identification must extend to all the circumstances necessary to identify the accused with the offence.
• Thirdly, the corroboration must come from independent sources and thus ordinarily the testimony of one accomplice would not be sufficient to corroborate that of another. But of course the circumstances may be such as to make it safe to dispense with the necessity of corroboration and in those special circumstances a conviction so based would not be illegal.
• Fourthly, the corroboration need not be direct evidence that the accused committed the crime. It is sufficient if it is merely circumstantial evidence of his connection with the crime.

The Supreme Court held that the combined result of Sections 133 read with illustration (b) to Section 114 of Evidence Act is that the Courts have evolved, as a rule of prudence, the requirement that it would be unsafe to convict an accused solely based on uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice. The evidence of an accomplice must point to the involvement of a particular accused.

The Supreme Court observed that the presumption of trial court against the accused was in conformity with law and thus no case was made out by the appellants accused as a result the criminal appeals were dismissed.

-India Legal Bureau