NEW DELHI: In the Jan 2014 Mumbai rape-murder of an IT professional that created as much sensation as the 2012 Nirbhaya case, Supreme Court Tuesday acquitted Chandrabhan Sudam Sanap by setting aside concurrent decisions of a trial court and Bombay HC that had convicted him and awarded death penalty. “He shall be set at liberty forthwith, if not required in any other case,” SC said.
Authoring the 113-page judgment that results in a heinous crime going unpunished, Justice KV Viswanathan, part of a bench comprising Justices B R Gavai and Prashant K Mishra, said, “Prosecution has not established its case beyond reasonable doubt. Hence, we are constrained to come to the sole irresistible conclusion that the appellant is not guilty of the offences for which he has been charged.”
The 23-year-old woman, referred to as ‘EA’ in the SC judgment, was working in Mumbai and staying at the YWCA Hostel for women in Andheri. She had visited her parents in Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh in Dec and was seen off at the Vijayawada railway station by her father on Jan 4, 2014.
As she could not be contacted over phone subsequently, the father lodged a missing person complaint and went to Mumbai in search of his daughter. EA’s body, half-burnt and decomposed, was discovered on Jan 16, 2014, in some bushes near the Eastern Express Highway.
SC analysed and re-appreciated the entire evidence produced by police before the trial court and said, “We allow the appeal (of Sanap) and set aside the judgment of the HC and acquit the appellant with regard to the offences for which he was charged in this case.”
Doubting the veracity of Sanap’s purported extra-judicial confession about committing the crime after picking the woman from the railway station in Mumbai on the promise to drop her to Andheri, the apex court bench said, “There is no corroboration in material particulars and hence we are inclined to reject the extra-judicial confession.”
The SC discarded the evidence linking the bike allegedly used in the commission of the crime to the accused. The court also discarded the evidence emerging from the test identification parade during which the accused was identified by witnesses on the ground that the photo of the accused was splashed all over the media by the time the TIP took place.
The court also discarded the alleged recovery of the deceased woman’s suitcase from the accused’s sister and said, “Merely based on the recovery, no conviction for the offence charged could be sustained against the appellant in this case. As to why the college identity card of the deceased EA would be preserved by the accused and kept in custody of the sister nearly two months after the incident is something we find very intriguing.”
The SC added, “All these facts cumulatively constrain us to conclude that there are gaping holes in the prosecution story leading to the irresistible conclusion that there is something more than what meets the eye in this case. While the adage – witness may lie but not the circumstances – may be correct, however, the circumstances adduced, as held by this court, should be fully established. “There is a legal distinction between ‘may be proved’ and ‘must be or should be proved’ as held by this court. The circumstances relied upon when stitched together do not lead to the sole hypothesis of the guilt of the accused and we do not find that the chain is so complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused.”
