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M. S. RAMESH, SUNDER MOHAN
Thirupathy Balaji @ Venkatesan – Appellant
Versus
State by: The Inspector of Police, Town Police Station, Thiruvannamalai – Respondent
JUDGMENT :
Sunder Mohan, J.
1. These Criminal Appeals have been filed by Accused Nos.1, 4, 5 and 7 to 10, challenging the conviction and sentence imposed upon them vide judgment dated 23.01.2023 in S.C.No.14 of 2014 on the file of the learned Principal District and Sessions Judge, Tiruvannamalai.
2. For the sake of convenience, the parties are referred to as per their ranking before the trial Court.
3 (i) The case of the prosecution is that A1 to A4 were closely related to each other; that A1 and A2 are brothers; that A3 is the father of A1 and A2; that A4 is the wife of A2; A5 was the driver of the lorry belonging to A2; A6 to A10 were employed in the Diary Farm run by A1; that A1 to A4 had prior enmity towards the deceased and there were many cases instituted against each other; that the deceased was a whistle-blower and had exposed the various illegal activities said to have been committed by A1 and his family members, including land grabbing and illegal sand mining; and that therefore A1 to A4 decided to do away with the deceased with the aid of the A5 to A10.
The prosecution's failure to establish reliable eyewitness identification and conspiratorial actions led to the acquittal of all appellants due to reasonable doubt.
(1) While appreciating evidence in criminal cases, there cannot be a strait-jacket formula. Evidence must be appreciated from perception of a prudent common man.(2) Conduct of a stranger eyewitness t....
Circumstantial evidence can support convictions for conspiracy and murder, even if witnesses turn hostile, provided the overall evidence points consistently to the guilt of the accused.
The central legal point established in the judgment is the requirement for reliable eyewitness testimony and proper identification procedures to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
In prosecutions involving serious charges, the burden lies on the prosecution to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and discrepancies in evidence or lack of corroboration can lead to acquittal.
The court affirmed the conviction of the accused for murder, finding sufficient evidence of an unlawful assembly and individual culpability amid claims of inconsistencies in prosecution testimony.
A conviction in a criminal case cannot be sustained solely on the testimony of a single eyewitness if that evidence is categorised as neither wholly reliable nor wholly unreliable and lacks further i....
Conviction requires not just evidence of guilt but also an established motive and reliable eyewitness accounts; procedural inaccuracies can compromise the prosecution's case.
Section 208 prescribes by clause (i) that the statements and confession recorded under Section 161 or Section 164 shall be supplied to the accused, free of cost.
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