Bombay HC acquits three men convicted, handed life-term for gangrape, murder of 19-year-old woman in 2012

As per the prosecution’s case, the decomposed body of the victim was found in October 2012 with hands tied. The postmortem report revealed the cause of death as throttling and that there was a vaginal tear. As per the prosecution, the 19-year-old victim left home on October 12 for a cloth shop, where she was employed but then went missing.

The probe revealed the victim had an affair with the prime accused and she was allegedly pressuring him to marry her but her father did not like her friendship with the prime accused. The prosecution claimed the accused took her to a spot, where he allegedly forced her to consume liquor. She was then gangraped and strangled to death and her body thrown into a well.

“On a careful scrutiny and re-appreciation of the evidence on record in the light of the settled principle of law, we are of the considered view that the prosecution has failed to prove the chain of circumstances including the ‘motive’ for the crime and the ‘last seen together’ theory so as to point towards the only hypothesis that, except the appellants, no other person has committed rape on the victim, caused her murder and the disappearance of the evidence,” the bench observed.

“A reasonable doubt lingers with respect to the probability or conclusiveness of the circumstance relied on by the prosecution, forming a link in the chain of circumstances pointing towards the guilt of the appellants. On the contrary, we find from the material on record that the possibility of planting witnesses by the police so as to stagemanage the prosecution story cannot be ruled out in this case,” the court added.

The HC allowed the appeals and held, “There is, therefore, reasonable doubt as to the veracity of the prosecution story. The benefit of doubt, therefore, must go to the appellants. As a result, all the appeals deserve to be allowed.”