2023 YLR 2538
The pointation of the place of alleged occurrence cannot be considered as discovery of new fact as envisaged under Article 40 of the Qanoone-Shahadat, 1984, because same is hit by Articles 38 and 39 of the same statute as the place of occurrence was already known and inspected by the investigation officer. Such pointation is of no avail to prosecution and being inadmissible cannot be considered against the appellant.
Yardstick to rely upon circumstantial evidence to sustain conviction.
It would not be out of place to observe that in cases of circumstantial evidence, there must be chain of evidence so complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for a conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and it must be such as to show that within all human probability the act must have been done by the accused. After a detailed and exhaustive analysis of catena of Judgments of apex Court, I am persuaded to observe that in a case of circumstantial evidence in order to sustain the conviction following conditions must be fulfilled:
(i) The facts and circumstances from which an inference of guilt is pursued to be drawn, must be established through cogent and convincing evidence of unimpeachable character.
(ii) Those circumstances should be of a conclusive nature having propensity accurately pointing towards the guilt of the accused.
(iii) The entire evidence available on the record when taken cumulatively, should be in form of a chain, which is compact enough to establish that there is no escape from the conclusion that within all probabilities the crime was authored by the accused and none else. It should also be incapable of explanation on any other hypothesis than that of the guilt of the accused by excluding all the hypothesis of his innocence.
2023 YLR 2538
Putrefactive effects on different organs of human body.
When a person dies various postmortem changes take place in his body, which consist of pallor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis, putrefaction or decomposition and skeletonization. It would be of utmost importance to see what is putrefaction, when it starts and when it reaches to its advanced stage.
Suspicion, however strong, is not the substitute for proof. There is elongated distinction between "may be true" and "must be true" and the prosecution is under a bounden duty to travel all the way to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt. Circumstantial evidence in present case does not meet the yardstick and standard as expounded by the apex Court, therefore, same does not warrant the conviction of the appellant.
The last seen theory comes into play where the time-gap between the point of time when the deceased was last seen alive in the company of accused and when the deceased is found dead is so small that possibility of any person other than the accused being the culprit of the crime becomes impossible. Evidence of last seen is considered a weak type of evidence which is not sufficient to sustain punishment in cases pertaining to capital punishment without corroboration from other circumstantial evidence available on the record.
There can be no fixed or straitjacket formula for the duration of time gap in this regard and it would depend upon the evidence furnished by the prosecution to eliminate every possibility of any other person meeting the deceased in the intervening period, that is to say, if the prosecution is able to lead such an evidence that possibility of any person other than the accused, being the author of the crime, becomes impossible, then the evidence of circumstance of last seen together, although there is long duration of time, can be considered as one of the circumstances in the chain of circumstances to prove the guilt against such accused person. But prosecution remains under the burden to eliminate all the probabilities that deceased could meet another person than deceased in the intervening period i.e. time between last seen alive and death.
In order to rely upon evidence of last seen prosecution has to prove both proximity between the time when deceased was last seen alive in the company of accused and time of death and of distance between the place where deceased was seen alive with accused and place where his corpse was found afterwards.
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