HC pulls up Lower Court for ignoring Principle of fair trial

The High Court of Orissa has indicted a Trial Court for ignoring the basic principle to ensure fair trial while convicting & sentencing a person to life imprisonment in a murder case.

The indictment came while the HC acquitted the person who has been in prison for 9 years in a murder case. 

The case involved the alleged murder of Sideo Munda on Sept 11, 2009, at 11.30 pm in Jamuda village under Harichandanpur Police Station in Keonjhar district.

The Court of Sessions Judge, Keonjhar, convicted the accused, Hiranya Kumar Behera, & sentenced him to imprisonment for life on June 30, 2011.

Hiranya challenged the Trial Court's decision in the HC by way of an appeal taking the defence of false implication. His plea was taken up in 2012 after the High Court Legal Services Committee appointed a counsel to argue his case as he wasn't able to bear the legal expenses. A division bench of the HC allowed the appeal petition on Feb 13, 2020.

The prosecution said that while Sideo was sleeping on a cot on the verandah, the accused, fuelled by previous enmity, hit him with an axe, causing injuries on his neck & severing his right index finger, subsequently resulting in his death.

On examining the case records, the division bench of Justice S K Mishra & Justice A K Mishra felt as the conviction is based on the single eye witness (wife of deceased) & her evidence is found to be not credible enough due to prior enmity & contradiction with medical evidence, the accused is entitled to be given benefit of doubt.

The Division Bench ruled, "So the appeal is allowed. The conviction of appellant (Hiranya Kumar Behera) under Section 302 of IPC & the sentence passed by learned sessions judge, Keonjhar, is set aside & the appellant be set at liberty forth with from the jail if he is not required in any other case".

The Bench observed that "The trial is found to have been done with haste ignoring the basic principle to ensure fair trial. The sessions judge, as record reveals, on 16.2.2010 adjourned the case for chemical examination report but subsequently without taking any steps framed charge, examined witnesses & completed trial recording conviction".

Fact remains that Court expedited the process at the expense of the basic elements of fairness & the opportunity to the accused, the division bench further observed. The probability that widow of the deceased might have implicated the accused for prior enmity is not ruled out, the bench said.

Source Link