Why SC acquitted death row convict in 2014 rape-murder of Mumbai techie

What was the incident?

The victim had returned from a vacation to Mumbai and reached the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) on January 5, 2014. Her father tried contacting her, including the hostel she then stayed at, but could not get in touch with her. He then filed a missing complaint and came to Mumbai to look for her.

Based on the last-known location of the victim’s phone, a search was conducted along the Eastern Express Highway near Bhandup. The police found a half-burnt decomposed body of a woman on January 16, 2014. Her father identified the body as his daughter’s based on a ring on her finger. The medical report established the cause of death as head injury with smothering, and also found evidence of sexual assault. Following this, the police filed a case of murder.

Nearly two months later, on March 2, 2014, the police arrested Sanap. The police theorised that he had offered the woman a lift at LTT but took a detour on the way to her hostel. According to the police, he took her to the bushes where he raped and killed her. He allegedly doused her body in petrol to destroy evidence before robbing her of her belongings.

What had the lower courts considered while sentencing Sanap to death?

The lower courts primarily relied on the CCTV footage from the railway station. The trial court said that the footage clearly showed the victim with her phone to her ear, and the accused walking ahead of her pulling her trolley bag, which her father had identified.

The courts also relied on the witness testimonies of a pay and park attendant and a pre-paid taxi supervisor who were present at the railway station on January 5, 2014. The statements of the two were taken in March, where they said they had seen the victim with a man and described him, later identifying him in the CCTV footage as well.

Further, the courts relied on the medical report, which established the victim had been smothered to death and indicated sexual assault.

Other evidence that the courts relied on were recoveries made at the instance of the accused. The courts said that evidence showed that Sanap told the police after his arrest that he had given away the trolley bag of the victim to an old woman beggar in Nashik, which the police recovered. The courts relied on her testimony about the bag.

The sessions court cited the recovery of the victim’s identity card from the home of Sanap’s sister. It also relied on an extra-judicial confession of an acquaintance of Sanap, calling him a ‘star witness’. The police had claimed that Sanap had taken the person to the spot to bring his motorbike and that confessed to him about killing the woman. While Sanap said that he was falsely implicated by the acquaintance due to a past quarrel, the court said that the person had given a statement after Sanap’s arrest, and had no reason to implicate him.

And why did the Supreme Court say there were gaping holes in the probe?

CCTV: The apex court discarded as evidence the CCTV footage where the victim was last seen alive and allegedly with Sanap, absent a certificate under Section 65-B of the Indian Evidence Act. The concerned certificate is necessary to authenticate electronic evidence and to rule out tampering. The SC highlighted its importance given the death sentence handed by the lower courts in this case. It also noted that the investigating officer was aware of this, and had taken it for other electronic evidence in the case, like the Call Data Records.

Test Identification Parade: The court held the test identification parade for the witnesses to identify the accused as invalid. It said that Sanap’s photo had widely circulated in the media, including grainy stills from the CCTV footage. The court held it implausible that the witnesses could have identified him based on those photographs alone.

Key witnesses who claimed to see the accused with the victim: The SC considered the testimonies of two persons, the pre-paid taxi booth operator and the pay-and-park attendant. It agreed with Sanap’s lawyers that the statements of these two men were taken only in March 2014, two months after the probe had begun. The court said that there was an inexplicable delay and they had not disclosed anything about seeing the victim and the accused when enquiries were first made at the railway station in January.

The SC also discarded the testimony of a dog-walker who claimed to have seen the accused at the spot where the body was found. It said that it was ‘unnatural’ that he remembered on January 19, 2014, what had happened on January 5, 2014, when he could not remember other past information.

Last seen: In criminal law, the onus is on the defence to clear its side, if the prosecution can establish that little time had elapsed between when an accused and deceased were last seen together and when the victim was found dead.

In this case, the SC held that this had not happened. It referred to medical experts who established the time of death at eight to 10 days before the post-mortem on January 17, 2014. The court thus concluded that the victim could have died on any day between January 7 and January 9, 2014, and much time had lapsed since when the accused was ‘last seen’ with the victim.

Extra-judicial confession: The court said that there were many omissions in the statement of the acquaintance to whom Sanap was alleged to have given an extra-judicial confession that he had killed the woman. It also said that while such confessions are weak evidence to base a conviction, it could not be said that Sanap could have confessed to the acquaintance, given they were not close.

Recovery: The court noted that the beggar from whom the trolley bag was allegedly recovered had told the trial court that she could not recollect the person who had given her the item. She has also said that she submitted a thumb impression to the police as they threatened to arrest her.

The police had also claimed that an identity card belonging to the victim was found in the accused’s sister’s home. The court said that this was unnatural as the accused would not keep the identity card for over two months.