2 months, 20 reviews: Why Madras High Court acquitted this death row prisoner

The court said in its judgment that it had subjected the oral and documentary evidence to repeated and detailed scrutiny on more than 20 occasions over the previous two months. After this prolonged examination, it found that the evidentiary foundation required to sustain a conviction was absent.

Justices N Anand Venkatesh and K K Ramakrishnan acquitted the man from all charges.

It also remarked that justice is not achieved by sacrificing one vulnerable person to vindicate another and the law must protect the child without abandoning the accused to a conviction unsupported by proof.

Why the court acquitted the accused?

The prosecution had alleged that the accused sexually assaulted five children. It was stated that after a programme conducted in their school regarding “good touch and bad touch”, the victims disclosed the alleged assault to their respective relatives. Following completion of the trial, the accused was sentenced to death by the trial court.

The counsel for the accused stated that the prosecution failed to establish the foundational facts constituting the offences alleged whereas the case counsel for the state said that the case involves a heinous offence against children, warranting imposition of the extreme penalty of death.

The court, after examining each survivor’s testimony, found material improvements, embellishments, inconsistencies, signs of tutoring and inherent improbabilities in their accounts. It also accepted the defence argument that the prosecution was driven by an ulterior motive, including the allegation that the victims’ parents were motivated by the prospect of securing substantial compensation.

It also noted that the delay in lodging the complaint caused prejudice to the accused and cast a cloud of suspicion over the prosecution case. The court also found material discrepancy regarding the date of occurrence, and the absence of any corroborative medical evidence, which created a doubt about the prosecution case.

The court noted that there was no evidence to infer that the identity of the accused was properly established during the course of survivor’s deposition. The court observed that all the survivors gave similar accounts of the alleged penetrative sexual assault, including the acts committed by the accused, the reasons for not disclosing the incidents, their awareness of good and bad touch, and the alleged criminal intimidation. The court observed that their narratives were strikingly similar and remained unchanged.

The court remarked that the manner in which the trial was conducted in the case raised grave concerns regarding the fairness and legality of the proceedings. “The learned Trial Judge proceeded to impose the extreme penalty of death without demonstrating strict compliance with the safeguards and guidelines repeatedly laid down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court governing cases involving capital punishment,” it said.

The court said that the proceedings were reduced to a mockery of the constitutional guarantee of a fair trial and have resulted in a grave miscarriage of justice.

The court observed that while false allegations may ordinarily warrant action against the victims’ parents, including recovery of compensation where legally permissible, the circumstances of the present case were different. It found that the victims themselves appeared to have suffered at the hands of their parents, who had set the criminal law in motion. Therefore, the court refrained from ordering recovery of compensation from them.