Punjab & Haryana High Court upholds murder acquittal, finds extra-judicial confession and recoveries unreliable

Dismissing the State's appeal against the acquittal of two men in a 2000 murder case, a Division Bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court (Justices Archana Puri and Harmeet Singh Deol) reaffirmed that an extra-judicial confession is ordinarily a weak piece of evidence, and can found a conviction only if it is voluntary, true, and made to a witness who appears unbiased and credible, with no circumstance suggesting a motive to falsely implicate the accused. The prosecution's case rested on an alleged extra-judicial confession made to one witness in the presence of another person who was never examined, and on recoveries of a rope and a chappal. The Court found the confession unreliable because the witness was the complainant's cousin and could not plausibly have helped the accused evade suspicion, as they allegedly believed.

On the recoveries, the Court held that the absence of an independent witness is not by itself fatal, but here the attesting witness to the rope's recovery was the complainant himself, the second chappal was recovered from a car seized after an unexplained delay, and nothing was sent for forensic examination. Reiterating that testimony of a related or interested witness cannot be discarded merely for that reason but must be scrutinised with care, and that an appellate court must be slow to interfere with an acquittal absent perversity or gross illegality, the Bench held the prosecution had not proved its case beyond reasonable doubt and dismissed the appeal.