Man accused of burning wife freed

NEW DELHI, December 8: A city court has acquitted, for lack of evidence, a person charged with burning his wife to death. The Additional ...

NEW DELHI, December 8: A city court has acquitted, for lack of evidence, a person charged with burning his wife to death. The Additional Sessions Judge (ASJ) ordered the police to release Hari Ram unless required in any other case.

According to the FIR filed at the Sarai Rohilla police station, Ram brought his wife, Shankari Devi, to the Jai Prakash Narain (JPN) hospital with 100 per cent burns. The victim was unfit to give her statement to the Investigating Officer of the case. However, she was quoted in the Medico Legal Certificate (MLC) as saying that her husband poured kerosene on her and set her on fire.

The ASJ, however, ruled out the MLC as supporting evidence to the allegations. According to him, there was no other reliable evidence that could corroborate the statement in the MLC. He refused to accept it as a reliable dying declaration. “How and why she has been burnt by her husband has not been disclosed by the patient herself and the same has not been narrated to the doctor by the victim,” said the order.

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The ASJ felt that the prosecution had failed to bring the charge of murder under the Indian Penal Code against Ram. In all, 17 witnesses were produced by the prosecution during the two-year case. Seven turned hostile. According to the ASJ’s order, nothing incriminating could be produced against the accused to connect him with the alleged offence of murder.

As per the prosecution case, the victim was allegedly burned by her husband on the intervening night of November 24 and 25, 1996. Considering the MLC, the police registered an FIR against Ram for murder. The statement of the dead woman’s nephew, Surinder Singh, was recorded in which he stated that Devi was burnt to death in his jhuggi number 416 on Old Rohtak Road. Devi had apparently gone to Singh’s jhuggi following a tiff with her husband.