Bombay HC upholds a murder conviction built entirely on circumstantial evidence

The Bombay High Court upheld a life sentence for a man convicted of murdering his wife, in a case built entirely on circumstantial evidence with no eyewitness and no forensic report on the exact cause of death. The appellant, a tailor from Junnar, was accused of strangling his wife with a scarf and striking her with a stone grinder in their home in June 2011, after years of alleged alcoholism and suspicion of infidelity that persisted even after her parents intervened to reconcile the couple. She was found dead at night while alone, awaiting his return.

There was no eyewitness to the killing, and the investigating agency never obtained a forensic science laboratory report. A Division Bench of Justices Manish Pitale and Shreeram V. Shirsat held that a conviction can rest entirely on circumstantial evidence provided the chain of circumstances is complete enough to exclude every reasonable hypothesis except the guilt of the accused, and that the absence of a forensic report is not by itself fatal if the rest of the chain, motive, opportunity, conduct and recovery, points unerringly to the accused. Applying that standard, and relying on recent Supreme Court authority on circumstantial evidence, the Court found the chain unbroken here and dismissed the appeal, confirming the life sentence.