9 yrs later, man given life in jail for murdering boy, 12, acquitted by HC

Bhopal/Jabalpur: A division bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court acquitted a person sentenced to life in 2017 for murdering a 12-year-old boy on the outskirts of Bhopal. Observing that the trial court judge “lost track of the case and was intent to convict the accused by hook or by crook”, the division bench of Justices Vivek Agarwal and AK Singh said that by awarding life sentence, “he has done extreme injustice to the accused”.

Referring to evidence and witnesses produced in the court, the judges said that they neither complete the chain of evidence to prove the accused guilty beyond doubt, nor do they seem credible.

The boy, Nitin, went missing on April 7, 2015. His body was recovered on April 9, 2015, from an open space in front of the accused, Sanjay Gupta’s house, and an FIR under the charges of murder was registered. Since Sanjay Gupta’s son and Nitin, the deceased, were last seen together in front of Gupta’s house by eyewitness Sahab Singh, who is Nitin’s maternal uncle, and his body was recovered in the proximity of Gupta’s house, he was interrogated and later made an accused.

The court said the probe was thoroughly mishandled.

The bench expressed surprise that articles seized in connection with the crime were sent for FSL for examination on October 30, 2015. “There is no explanation as to why the seized articles were kept with the police station for six months and why they were not sent to FSL in time. Thus, the chain of custody also appears to be compromised,” the bench observed.

On the main eyewitness in the case Sahab Singh, the judges said that he appeared to be hardly credible as he told the police that he was going in a car when he last saw Nitin and, in the court, he deposed that he was on a motorcycle.

The court also said that there is evidence to show the presence of the accused in a factory from morning 08:30 till 05:00 and then attending the birthday party of his factory owner’s daughter from 08:00 onwards at Bhopal, on the day of the crime.

“We are constrained to observe that the trial court did not decide the case with an open mind but rather appears to have been prejudiced in recording the conviction,” the court said. Thus, the order of conviction deserves to be set aside, and the appeal of the accused allowed, said the judges in their order.