The division judge bench of Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice N.S Shekhawat of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the case of Surinder Pal Vs State of Punjab granted the benefit of the doubt to the accused and acquitted him of all the charges of killing his own daughter.
BRIEF FACTS
The factual matrix of the case is that the wife of the accused and her daughter (deceased) were returning to the house and they witness that the accused was purchasing the bottle of liquor after selling the wheat. When the complainant restrained him from taking liquor but he started beating her. When the deceased gave the blow to the accused and asked him why he is beating the complainant. Thereafter, the accused also started beating the daughter and throttled her neck and she died on the spot. The accused also threatened the complainant and the children to not to tell anybody about the incident. In the morning, he told the neighbors that she died due to a heart attack. The complainant along with his brother filed the complaint at the police station. The charges were framed against the accused under sections 302 and 201 of the Indian penal code, 1860 which was further confirmed by the trial court.
COURT’S OBSERVATION
The hon’ble court held that on marshaling the entire evidence and the documents on record, we do not agree with the view taken by the trial Court. There were many serious infirmities in the case of the prosecution and consequently, no reliance can be placed on the prosecution witnesses to hold the appellant guilty of the charges under Sections 302 and 201 of IPC.
The hon’ble court further relied upon the judgement titled “Paramjeet Singh @ Pamma Vs. State of Uttarakhand” in which it was held that
“ A criminal trial is not a fairy tale wherein one is free to give flight to one's imagination and fantasy. Crime is an event in real life and is the product of an interplay between different human emotions. In arriving at a conclusion about the guilt of the accused charged with the commission of a crime, the court has to judge the evidence by the yardstick of probabilities, its intrinsic worth, and the animus of witnesses. Every case, in the final analysis, would have to depend upon its own facts. The court must bear in mind that "human nature is too willing when faced with brutal crimes, to spin stories out of strong suspicions." Though an offense may be gruesome and revolt against the human conscience, an accused can be convicted only on legal evidence and not on surmises and conjecture. The law does not permit the court to punish the accused on the basis of a moral or suspicion alone. "The burden of proof in a criminal trial never shifts and it is always the burden of the prosecution to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt on the basis of acceptable evidence." In fact, it is a settled principle of criminal jurisprudence that the more serious the offense, the stricter the degree of proof required, since a higher degree of assurance is required to convict the accused. The fact that the offense was committed in a very cruel and revolting manner may in itself be a reason for scrutinizing the evidence more closely, lest the shocking nature of the crime induces an instinctive reaction against dispassionate judicial scrutiny of the facts and law.”
Further, the reliance was made upon the judgment titled “Sarwan Singh Rattan Singh v. State of Punjab” in which it was held that
"Considered as a whole the prosecution story may be true; but between 'may be true' and 'must be true there is inevitably a long distance to travel and the whole of this distance must be covered by legal, reliable, and unimpeachable evidence [before an accused can be convicted].”
The hon’ble court holds that the view taken by the trial Court is certainly not a possible and plausible view. In view of the observations made above, in our considered opinion, the conclusions drawn by the trial Court are wholly unsustainable and contrary to the settled principles of law. Extending the benefit of the doubt to the appellant, he is ordered to be acquitted of the charges.
CASE NAME- Surinder Pal Vs State of Punjab
CITATION- CRA-D-2-DB-2010 (O&M)
DATE-6.09.22
CORUM- Justice Sureshwar Thakur and Justice N.S Shekhawat
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