Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 13: A Division Bench of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court comprising Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi today set-aside the life-imprisonment of Shafi Mohd, who had allegedly killed his two years old son.
After hearing both the sides, the DB observed, “though the prosecution may have succeeded in establishing that the death of the deceased child occurred due to administering of poison yet there is no evidence on record to prove that the poison was administered by the appellant”.
“The disclosure statement and the recovery of the bottle having left over poison have not been proved at all. In the light of the evidence on record, it is difficult for us to believe the prosecution story that the appellant administered poison to the child, which he had brought in a small Nuvan bottle and that after administering the poison, the appellant kept the bottle with left over poison hidden in the fields, which the prosecution recovered after more than one month of the occurrence”, the DB said.
“The natural conduct of such person is to destroy the evidence by throwing away the left over poison, if any, after administering the same to his victim”, the DB further observed, adding “we do not find the judgment of conviction recorded by the trial court in conformity with the evidence on record and in consonance with law”.
“In the absence of ocular evidence, it was incumbent upon the prosecution to prove its case on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Law with regard to proving the case, which rests on circumstantial evidence, is well settled”, the DB said, adding “prosecution has not established the circumstances forming an unbroken chain leading to the only hypothesis inconsistent with the innocence of the appellant”.
With these observations the DB set-aside the impugned order of sentence and directed that the appellant be set at liberty forthwith.
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