After Supreme Court Remand, Rajasthan High Court Upholds Conviction for 1996 Barmer Murder on Footprint and Forensic Evidence

A woman living alone at Kalyanpura in Barmer district was found murdered in her home on the morning of 3 February 1996, and jewellery was missing (paras 3-4). Footprints at the scene were traced; the appellants were arrested on 20 March 1996, stolen ornaments were recovered from both, and a blood-stained knife and clothes from the first appellant (paras 4, 6). On 2 December 1997 the Additional Sessions Judge, Barmer convicted the first appellant under Sections 302 and 380 IPC and the second under Section 380 IPC (para 1). The High Court acquitted both on 25 March 2004; the Supreme Court set that aside in the State's appeal and remanded the case (para 2).

With no eyewitness, the Bench required each circumstance to be proved and all of them, read together, to exclude any hypothesis of innocence, adding that one circumstance may strengthen another (para 11). Against the first appellant it found four: his bare left-foot impression matched the impression lifted at the scene; his shirt and pant were blood-stained; the forensic report found blood group 'A' on the deceased's shawl and towel and on the knife and clothes recovered from him; and her gold ring recovered from him was identified by her adopted son (paras 13-16, 20). The medical evidence ruled out a knife, death being by strangulation, but the Bench held the knife still corroborative because the deceased had abrasions and lacerated wounds and her shawl was soaked with blood (para 15). Following Earabhadrappa, it held that the delay of about six weeks mattered little for distinctive ornaments not likely to pass readily from hand to hand, and that the presumption under Illustration (a) to Section 114 of the Evidence Act applied (paras 17-19). Against the second appellant only the identified pendant was proved, which supported theft alone (paras 23-28).