Supreme Court: a witness's testimony must be accepted or rejected as a whole, not charge by charge

The Supreme Court acquitted a man convicted of rape after holding that a court cannot disbelieve a prosecutrix's testimony for one charge while relying on the very same testimony to convict on another. The prosecutrix, then a schoolgirl, alleged the appellant kept her at a flat in Ludhiana and later at an abandoned factory in Malerkotla for about a week in 2009, and raped her both times. The trial court acquitted him of kidnapping under Section 366 of the Indian Penal Code, finding she was a major who had passed through crowded, lit streets without raising an alarm and so had gone with him voluntarily, yet convicted him of rape under Section 376 for the same period, reasoning that going along voluntarily does not mean consenting to intercourse.

The High Court affirmed. The Supreme Court, per Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Atul S. Chandurkar, held there can be no partial acceptance and partial rejection of one witness's account: if her evidence is credible it must be believed in its entirety, and if disbelieved for one charge arising from the same facts, it cannot be selectively relied on for a graver one. Noting internal contradictions and the absence of injuries or any hue and cry over several days, the Court found her version did not inspire confidence, and set aside the conviction.