The Supreme Court on Monday outlined the “presumption of innocence” in case of an acquittal by a trial court and said appellate courts should not reverse decisions unless there was “manifest illegality or perversity”. The verdict of a bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and K Vinod Chandran, therefore, overturned the Chhattisgarh High Court‘s conviction of one Jagdish Gond for his wife’s alleged murder.
Justice Chandran, authoring the judgment for the bench, restored the acquittal previously granted by the trial court.
The verdict said his conviction lacked substantive evidence and failed to meet the legal standards required to reverse an acquittal.
“It is trite that unless it is demonstrated that there is some manifest illegality or perversity in the conclusions recorded by the trial court while arriving at the finding of guilt of the accused, an acquittal ordinarily should not be reversed,” the top court said.
If two views were possible, the bench held, then the “one taken by the trial court to acquit the accused, if found to be a plausible one, cannot be upset lightly by the appellate court” as “presumption of innocence available to an accused gets further fortified by the acquittal entered by the trial court.”
The high court “unfortunately” reversed the acquittal without anything but an alibi not being proved, it added.
The case stemmed from the death of the woman, who was married with Gond for two years, and whose mortal remains he reportedly discovered on the morning of January 29, 2017.
Gond informed the police immediately, following which an initial report paved way for a case of an unnatural death under Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The postmortem report revealed a ligature mark on the front of the neck, but the cause of death remained inconclusive.
The trial court, considering the absence of conclusive medical evidence and circumstantial support, acquitted Gond ruling the death to be a suicide.
However, when the state appealed against the acquittal, the high court reversed it, convicting him under Section 302 (murder) of IPC and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The high court relied on the principle under Section 106 of the Indian Evidence Act, saying since the husband and wife lived together, Gond bore the burden of explaining the circumstances of her death.
It also rejected his defense of being at work on the night of the incident due to lack of corroborating evidence.
