The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has dismissed an appeal against the acquittal of Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra ‘Teni’ and others in a 23-year-old case related to the murder of a former Lucknow University student leader in Lakhimpur Kheri. Mishra, who represents the Lakhimpur Kheri seat in the Lok Sabha, and other accused in this 2000 case were acquitted by a local court in 2004 due to “lack of evidence” and the “prosecution’s failure” to prove its case against them. The UP government had filed an appeal against their acquittal in the high court, while the victim Prabhat Gupta’s father Santosh Gupta had filed a criminal revision petition to challenge the trial court’s verdict. “As a sequel to above, the appeal as well as the revision are therefore dismissed. The judgment and order of acquittal dated 29.03.2004 in Sessions Trial No. 518/2001, under section 302/34 IPC, acquitting all the accused/respondents is upheld and all the accused/respondents are acquitted of the charges levelled against them. The bail bonds, if any, shall stand discharged,” the high court stated in its ruling on Friday. The case On July 8, 2000, a businessman Santosh Gupta had filed an FIR against Ajay Mishra and three others at the Tikonia police station in Lakhimpur, alleging that his son Prabhat Gupta alias Raju was heading to their shop at around 3.00 pm but when he reached the main road the accused surrounded him to attack him. Santosh ran a wholesale shop of grocery items. His FIR alleged that Ajay Mishra and his associate Subhash alias Mama opened fire at Prabhat. Two other accused, Rakesh alias Dalu and Shashibhushan alias Pinki, while brandishing their weapons threatened that whoever came close would be shot dead, the complainant said, alleging that after killing Prabhat the assailants escaped from the spot. He stated that his another son Sanjeev Gupta and one Vinod had witnessed the incident. He also charged that Ajay Mishra had developed “enmity” with Prabhat over the panchayat elections. The next day, the post-mortem was conducted on Prabhat’s body, which stated that his death occurred due to shock and haemorrhage as a result of ante mortem injuries and that one bullet was recovered from his body. The deceased had sustained two gunshot wounds of entry and only one exit wound. Prabhat’s younger brother Rajeev Gupta said he had contested the Lucknow University Student Union election for the post of vice-president in 1997 and lost. Rajeev also said when the incident occurred Prabhat had left his studies and joined active politics. Prabhat was then with the Samajwadi Party (SP) and planning to contest the panchayat election. Police investigation The police investigation into the case had been conducted in piecemeal manner by several officers. As per the court order, sub-inspector T B Singh conducted the probe for seven days between July 8, 2000 and July 15, 2000 and the investigation was then transferred to a police team headed by Balbir Singh, which was constituted on the order of Inspector General, Zone. This team however carried out its probe just for three days until July 18, 2000. The investigation was then transferred to the SIS (Security and Investigation Services) and for one day (July 19, 2000) it was conducted by Hemant Singh. It was subsequently transferred to the CB CID’s RP Tiwari, who handled it from July 20 to September 28, 2000 (70 days). The court stated that from the record available it was not clear about the proceedings of the investigation, if any, conducted between September 28, 2000 and November 6, 2000 (39 days). Later, the investigation was concluded by another RP Tiwari of the SIS, who did it during November 6-December 13, 2000 (32 days) and filed the chargesheet against the four accused – Ajay Mishra, Subhash, Rakesh and Shashi Bhushan. The alleged complicity of the accused in the murder case centred round the oral evidence of five witnesses, with the rest of the evidence being corroborative in nature. The accused surrendered before the court. Trial court judgment The trial court heard the case on a day-to-day basis and delivered its judgment on March 29, 2004. The prosecution examined 12 witnesses including the complainant Santosh Gupta and the eyewitnesses mentioned in the FIR, Sanjeev Gupta and Vinod Gupta. In their statements recorded under Section 313 CrPC, the accused denied the charge of murder, stating that they have been implicated due to political rivalry and enmity that erupted due to the panchayat elections. They denied the prosecution’s case and claimed that the witnesses have given “false statements” in order to implicate them in the case. In its verdict, the court said the prosecution completely failed to prove its case, which did not inspire any confidence. It said the presence of the eyewitnesses on the spot could not be proved and the prosecution’s case “developed from stage to stage” was “inconsistent” with the medical evidence. The court also ruled that the prosecution’s story did not support the FIR, stating that its case and evidence were not credible. It thus acquitted all the accused. HC verdict In 2004, the UP government filed an appeal in the high court to challenge the Lakhimpur Kheri court judgment acquitting all four accused, including Ajay Mishra, in the Prabhat Gupta murder case. Prabhat’s father Santosh Gupta also filed a criminal revision plea against the verdict. Santosh died during the trial of the case and an application was filed to declare his surviving legal heirs as revision petitioners. The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court allowed Santosh’s legal heirs to participate as “victims” in the state appeal. On May 19, 2023, a division bench of Justices Attau Rahman Masoodi and Om Prakash Shukla ruled that “This court finds that all the aforesaid aspects have been considered threadbare by the trial court. The evidence recorded in the present case has been appreciated in its correct perspective and the trial court has at no point of time missed the woods of the tree. Thus, we do not find any perversity in the order of acquittal passed by the trial court and in any case, the law presumes double presumption in favour of the accused after a due adjudication by the trial court. Further, on recording of the findings as aforesaid, we find that the prosecution has utterly failed to establish the chain of events which can be said to exclusively lead to the one and only conclusion, i.e., the guilt of the accused persons.” The high court said: “In that view of the matter, we find that the judgment and order of the learned Sessions Judge to be a plausible and sustainable view, especially when the trial court had the advantage of seeing and assessing the demeanour of witnesses.” It also added: “This court has also recorded its independent finding and holds that the theory put forth by prosecution that the four accused persons were liable for causing death of the deceased is unconvincing and shorn of evidence proved beyond reasonable doubt.” Victim family In his reaction to the high court’s judgment, Prabhat’s younger brother Rajeev Gupta said they will move the Supreme Court to challenge it. He also said that, “I will request Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to issue direction to authorities to move Supreme Court to challenge the high court judgment. I will request the government to do so because in 2004 the state government had filed the appeal against the trial court order. I will write a letter to the CM in this regard.”
