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Murder Case
Saurabh Malik
Chandigarh, March 12
The Punjab and Haryana High Court has acquitted a Gurdaspur resident sentenced to life in a murder case after holding that “dying declaration cannot constitute the sole basis for recording the conviction in the absence of any other reliable and trustworthy corroborative evidence”.
The ruling came on an appeal filed by Satpal Singh and another against the State of Punjab through advocate Ashok Saini. The appeal, placed before the Bench of Justice Hemant Gupta and Justice Jaswant Singh, was filed by victim Joginder Kaur’s husband Satpal Singh and mother-in-law Balbir Kaur. They had challenged the judgment and order dated March 16, 2002, passed by the Gurdaspur Additional Sessions Judge.
The FIR in the matter was registered on September 26, 1996, on the basis of Joginder Kaur’s statement before Ludhiana’s tehsildar-cum- executive magistrate a day before. It was made while she was undergoing medical treatment for severe burns.
The victim had asserted that her mother-in-law had quarrelled with her and her husband Satpal Singh then “struck something with force on her head with the result she fell down on the ground and became unconscious. Thereafter, she could not know as to who set her on fire”.
After hearing the arguments, the Bench ruled: It is obvious that the persons surrounding injured Joginder Kaur around the time the statement/dying declaration was made were members from her parents' family and their influence is reflected from the last sentence of statement “that they had brought her to CMC Hospital, Ludhiana.
“This association is contradicted by record of CMC, Ludhiana, proved by Dr Ajit G Verghese that she was admitted on September 24, 1996, by her husband, who had undertaken to bear the expenses and paid the initial amount of Rs 7,000. These circumstances, in our view, render the alleged dying declaration of the deceased as inherently infirm and unsafe to be accepted as depicting the true version of the incident.”
The Bench added the present appeal qua appellant Satpal Singh is allowed; the judgment and order is set aside and he is acquitted of the charges framed against him; qua the other appellant in view of her death on November 11, 2009, the appeal stands abated.
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