Judgment Intelligence
Conviction Set Aside- Court
- Rajasthan High Court
- Date of Decision
- 6 November 2026
- Bench
- Justice Mahendar Kumar Goyal and Justice Bhuwan Goyal
- Relevant Acts & Sections
- Indian Penal Code, 1860 — Section 302; Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 — Sections 161, 437A; Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 — Section 481
Appeal allowed; the conviction and sentence of 4 March 2015 quashed and set aside and the appellant acquitted, to be set at liberty forthwith unless required in another case; personal bond of Rs 25,000 with one surety under Section 437-A CrPC / Section 481 BNSS, effective for six months (pp. 14-15).
Source Rajasthan High Court, hcraj.nic.in — judgment pronounced on 6 November 2026
Key holdings
- Without any injury on the body or sign of struggle at the scene, the inference that one man hanged an adult woman was unsafe (pp. 7-10).
- An unexplained ten-day delay in recording an eyewitness's Section 161 CrPC statement casts doubt on his testimony (pp. 5-6).
- An endorsement in a site plan recording what the complainant told the police is not substantive evidence (p. 12).
- An arrest memo is not substantive evidence of post-incident conduct, and a rope never sent to the FSL is not a connecting link (pp. 12-13).
Judgment digest by NyayVidhan: a summary of the court's judgment, not its text. The judgment itself is the authoritative version.
Brief Facts
Court's Findings
Legal Principle
NyayVidhan's view · Practice note
Why It Matters
In a hanging death charged as murder, the judgment shows what carried the appeal: a post-mortem with no external injury, a doctor who accepted that suicidal hanging could not be ruled out, a site plan showing no sign of struggle, and the signs separating hanging from strangulation (pp. 6-12). A child eyewitness whose police statement was recorded ten days late without explanation may not outweigh that medical evidence (pp. 5-6), and an endorsement in a site plan or an arrest memo is not substantive evidence (pp. 12-13). The same Bench acquitted a husband charged with killing his wife and daughters in Simbhu Singh; on doubts about a sole eyewitness, compare the Supreme Court in Surinder v. State of Haryana.
Editorial comment by the NyayVidhan Editorial Desk. It is not part of the Court's judgment and is not legal advice.
Precedents Relied Upon
- Eswarappa @ Doopada Eswarappa v. State of Karnataka MANU/SC/1608/2018
Relied on by the appellant (judgment dated 15.02.2018). The Court set out its facts (no injury, no sign of struggle, no evidence that the victim was first rendered unconscious) and quoted its holding that strangulation could not be inferred and that the benefit of doubt must go to the accused; it found a similar situation in this case and examined the post-mortem findings in its light (pp. 2-3, 7-8, 11-12).
- Arun & Ors. v. State of Madhya Pradesh 2025 INSC 406
Para 14 quoted: an unexplained delay by the investigating officer in recording the Section 161 CrPC statements of crucial witnesses casts a cloud on their testimonies; applied to the son's statement, recorded ten days after the incident (pp. 5-6).
- Khambam Raja Reddy and Another v. Public Prosecutor, High Court of Andhra Pradesh (2006) 11 SCC 239
Para 19 quoted: if the ocular testimony cannot be related to the injuries and the circumstances in which they were said to have been inflicted, the court may decline to accept it (pp. 10-11).
View all precedents (7)
- Abdul Sayeed v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2010) 10 SCC 259
Para 39 quoted: when medical evidence makes ocular testimony improbable that is a relevant factor, and where it rules out all possibility of the ocular evidence being true, the ocular evidence may be disbelieved (p. 11).
- Goutam Bindia & etc. v. State of Assam Criminal Appeal Nos. 569-570 of 2025 dated 04.02.2025
Cited by the Public Prosecutor; the Court held that this judgment, which dealt with the probative value of a child's deposition, was of no assistance to the prosecution, as it found no reason to give the son's account primacy over the medical evidence (pp. 4, 12).
- Manohar Keshavrao Khandate v. State of Maharashtra 2025 INSC 953
Cited by the Public Prosecutor; held of no assistance to the prosecution for the same reason as Goutam Bindia (pp. 4, 12).
- Mani Ram and Ors. v. State of Uttar Pradesh 1994 SCC (Crl.) 1242
Cited by the appellant for the submission that ocular testimony which cannot be reconciled with the medical evidence is not safe to rely on; not separately discussed (p. 3).
