Supreme Court acquits woman in 2005 dowry-death case over inconsistent dying declarations

Sunitabai, married to Shamkant, was allegedly ill-treated by her husband's family over dowry demands and the absence of children, and was set on fire on 10 April 2005. Before she died, she gave three separate dying declarations, including one implicating her mother-in-law, Kamalbai Waman Patil, as having thrown kerosene on her. The Sessions Court found the three dying declarations inconsistent and acquitted the accused, giving them the benefit of doubt.

The Bombay High Court's Aurangabad Bench reversed the acquittal, relying on one dying declaration and on Section 106 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 (which places the burden of explaining facts especially within a person's own knowledge on that person), convicting Kamalbai under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and sentencing her to life imprisonment — without hearing her on the sentence, as Section 386(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 requires after an appellate court reverses an acquittal. The Supreme Court restored the acquittal, holding that inconsistency among the three dying declarations entitled the accused to the benefit of doubt, that an acquittal strengthens rather than weakens the presumption of innocence, and that an appellate court cannot disturb an acquittal unless the trial court's view was perverse or illegal — which this was not. The appellant was ordered released.