The Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of a man in a murder case, stating that ocular evidence is more reliable than the opinion of a medical expert. The appellant, Rameshji Amarsing Thakor, had appealed against a Gujarat High Court judgment that had reversed the trial court’s order of acquittal.
A bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M Trivedi dismissed the discrepancies pointed out the appellant regarding the deposition of prosecution witnesses, considering them minor. The court emphasized that the eyewitness accounts consistently implicated Thakor as the perpetrator of the stabbing. The court also stated that the number of injuries and the mismatch of the recovered knife with the injuries were not fatal to the prosecution’s case.
The Supreme Court further highlighted that the corroborations provided post-occurrence witnesses aligned with the eyewitness account of the sequence of events following the infliction of injuries on the deceased. The court cited the precedence of the SC judgment in the case of Darbara Singh vs State of Punjab (2012), which prioritized ocular evidence over the opinion of medical experts.
The bench concluded that there was no reason to interfere with the judgment under appeal and quoted the case of ‘Gurbachan Singh Vs Satpal Singh and Others’ (1990), affirming that exaggerated devotion to the benefit of doubt should not allow the guilty to escape justice.
In this particular case, two other accused persons were acquitted the High Court due to doubts, while the presence of the appellant was proven beyond a reasonable doubt. As there was no appeal the state against the acquittal of the other two co-accused individuals, the court refrained from commenting on that aspect of the High Court’s judgment.
The murder case involved the killing of Jayantibhai on the evening of July 10, 1995, through knife strikes. The deceased’s brother filed the FIR, accusing Thakor of murder and the other two accused of holding the deceased’s hands. The prosecution relied on the statement of an eyewitness and the dying declaration made before two other witnesses. The trial court initially acquitted all three accused based on medical evidence.
Sanya Talwar, Editor at Lawbeat, provided this report. With over four years of experience practicing in courts, Talwar has been heading the organization since its inception.
Note: The article has been rephrased and rearranged for better readability and coherence.
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