Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973

The Supreme Court set aside the life sentence of a man convicted of raping and murdering his young niece in Sikkim in 2013, holding that the chain of circumstances was broken at several points. No witness saw him take the child, the recovery spot was open to passers-by, the bones recovered were of male origin, the forensic tests were inconclusive, and his Section 313 answers could not fill the gaps.

The Supreme Court dismissed Himachal Pradesh's appeal against the acquittal of a woman accused of strangling her step-mother and minor step-brother. The last-seen witness had improved on his police statement, the investigating officer never explained why or when he recorded the taxi driver and hotel worker, tower locations were never collected, and a DNA match on a trunk showed only that the accused, a regular visitor, had been there at some point.

The Supreme Court quashed a cheating complaint under Sections 417 and 420 IPC against the CEO of a tea company who signed an MoU for a tea estate on the company's behalf. The ₹40 lakh was paid to the company, the complainant already knew of the bank mortgage, and a bare assertion that he knew the representation was false did not show dishonest intention at the inception; the dispute was predominantly contractual (paras 7-11).

The Rajasthan High Court at Jodhpur discharged an accused charged under Section 8/29 of the NDPS Act. It held that statements of co-accused recorded under Section 67 cannot be used as confessions after Tofan Singh, and that a bare allegation that the accused ‘cooperated’ in the narcotic trade, with no overt act, transaction or recovery attributed to him, does not disclose abetment or conspiracy. The ₹68,500 found on him showed no nexus with the offence (paras 9-21).

The Rajasthan High Court granted anticipatory bail to a woman sought to be added as an accused in the 2018 Supervisor (Women Empowerment) recruitment paper leak case. She was not named in the FIR, in witness statements or in two charge-sheets, and the material against her rested on a chain of disclosures, which cannot by itself justify depriving a person of liberty (paras 5-5.4, 6).

The Supreme Court set aside orders compelling the CBI to produce documents it had not relied on, at the stage of framing of charges. Without deciding the conflict between Debendra Nath Padhi and Sarla Gupta, it held that an accused may access documents held by the prosecution to shape the defence, but the stage depends on the document: voluminous unrelied material is inspected, and specific documents are produced at trial.

The Rajasthan High Court set aside a Magistrate's order, passed on a protest petition, taking cognizance only for culpable homicide in an assault death case, and the revisional order upholding it, because the Magistrate had weighed the medical evidence to rule out an intention to kill. Whether the case is murder or culpable homicide is for trial, not the cognizance stage (paras 14, 17-20).

The Supreme Court held that when an accused is released because the police breached Article 22(1), by not giving written grounds of arrest, or Article 22(2), by not producing him before a Magistrate within 24 hours, the same police cannot re-arrest him on their own. Re-arrest needs the Magistrate's permission on an application made after furnishing the grounds, explaining the lapse and endorsed by a superior officer. The Court set aside the High Court's contrary order (paras 24-25, 36, 38).

The Rajasthan High Court upheld a Pali magistrate's order allowing the complainant in a cheque dishonour case to exhibit a bank return memo bearing the bank's seal and signature as Exhibit-9, although an unsigned computer-generated memo had already been marked Exhibit-2. This corrected an inadvertent error and did not fill a lacuna (para 8.4). Marking a document as an exhibit is not proof of it, and the accused can still cross-examine and object to its admissibility (paras 9.3, 12).

The Rajasthan High Court held that a DVD and pen drive of CCTV footage filed with the charge-sheet are documents that must be supplied to the accused under Section 207 CrPC. It quashed a Hindaun City trial court order of 31 July 2023 rejecting the accused's application for them (paras 3, 19). The trial court must supply a cloned copy forthwith; where the privacy of a victim or witness is involved, inspection alone may be allowed (paras 18, 20).

The Supreme Court has upheld the acquittal of two men convicted of a double murder, dismissing the State's appeal against the High Court's benefit-of-doubt finding. It held the circumstantial evidence chain was incomplete: no eyewitness, a key witness's delayed disclosure, and recoveries made days after the arrest that appeared stage-managed and artificial.

The Rajasthan High Court dismissed revisions by two former Panchayat Samiti members against charges under the Prevention of Corruption Act and for forgery and conspiracy over alleged embezzlement in rural poverty schemes. At the charge stage the court takes the prosecution material at face value; a mini-trial or an assessment of its truth is not permitted (paras 1, 10-12, 17-20).