Point-Blank Claim Contradicted by Post-Mortem: Rajasthan High Court Acquits Two of 2013 Jhalawar Murder

A man was shot dead on the evening of 22 November 2013 while travelling by motorcycle with a companion in the Dug police station area of Jhalawar district. His brother's written report the next morning, based on a midnight telephone call relaying the companion's account, named Umrao Singh, Kripal Singh and others, and FIR No. 185/2013 under Sections 302/34 IPC followed (pp. 2-3). Proceedings against a co-accused abated on his death in 2014 (p. 3). On 12 July 2018 the Additional District and Sessions Judge, Bhawanimandi convicted both appellants under Sections 302/34 IPC (life imprisonment) and Section 3/25 of the Arms Act (three years), the sentences to run concurrently (pp. 1-2).

Four gunshot wounds proved a homicidal death (p. 6), but the case rested on one eyewitness, the deceased's companion. He did not explain how the accused reached the spot, and passed word of the killing only between 11 pm and midnight, through a man in another village (p. 8). A man he placed at the scene holding his collar was neither charge-sheeted nor examined and, as a defence witness, denied seeing the incident; the eyewitness himself was held at the police station for three days (pp. 8-9). His host that evening was not examined, his hand injury had no injury report, his own report naming four men never surfaced, and the motorcycle and phones were not recovered (pp. 9-10). His account of guns pressed to the head clashed with the autopsy: one head wound, shots from more than a metre, no blackening or burning. Following Suresh Singhal, Khambam Raja Reddy and Abdul Sayeed, his testimony was unsafe (pp. 10-14). The investigating officer never deposed the exact words of either disclosure, so under Ramanand the recoveries failed (pp. 14-18); the seizure witness put them 10-11 feet apart though the memos placed them in two villages (p. 18).