{"id":177936,"date":"2004-09-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-07T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.legalindia.com\/judgments\/state-of-rajasthan-vs-khuma-on-8-september-2004"},"modified":"2017-08-04T00:26:21","modified_gmt":"2017-08-03T18:56:21","slug":"state-of-rajasthan-vs-khuma-on-8-september-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.legalindia.com\/judgments\/state-of-rajasthan-vs-khuma-on-8-september-2004","title":{"rendered":"State Of Rajasthan vs Khuma on 8 September, 2004"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"docsource_main\">Supreme Court of India<\/div>\n<div class=\"doc_title\">State Of Rajasthan vs Khuma on 8 September, 2004<\/div>\n<div class=\"doc_bench\">Bench: Arijit Pasayat, C.K. Thakker<\/div>\n<pre>           CASE NO.:\nAppeal (crl.)  559-560 of 1999\n\nPETITIONER:\nSTATE OF RAJASTHAN\n\nRESPONDENT:\nKHUMA\n\nDATE OF JUDGMENT: 08\/09\/2004\n\nBENCH:\nARIJIT PASAYAT &amp; C.K. THAKKER\n\nJUDGMENT:\n<\/pre>\n<p>JUDGMENT<\/p>\n<p>2004 Supp(4) SCR 219<\/p>\n<p>The Judgment of the Court was delivered by<\/p>\n<p>ARIJIT PASAYAT, J. : Heard learned counsel for the Appellant-State. There<br \/>\nis no appearance on behalf of the respondent-accused. Respondent faced<br \/>\ntrial for alleged commission of offence punishable under&#8221; Section 302 of<br \/>\nthe Indian Penal Code, 1860 (in short &#8216;I.P.C.&#8217;). Though found guilty by the<br \/>\nTrial Court, he was acquitted by the High Court.\n<\/p>\n<p>We have gone through the judgments of the High Court and the Trial Court.<br \/>\nThe Trial Court relied upon three circumstances to find the respondent<br \/>\nguilty. They were : (1) he was last seen with the deceased persons. (2) he<br \/>\nwas found to be in possession of the &#8216;Kadiyas&#8217; when he was arrested and (3)<br \/>\nthe recovery of blood stained articles on being pointed out by him. The<br \/>\naccused was awarded death sentence. He filed one appeal from jail and one<br \/>\nthrough counsel. A reference was made by the Trial Court for confirmation<br \/>\nof the death sentence. The High Court analysed the evidence and found the<br \/>\naccused innocent and directed his acquittal.\n<\/p>\n<p>Learned counsel for the appellant-State submitted that the circumstances<br \/>\nhighlighted by the prosecution were sufficient for finding the accused<br \/>\nguilty. The Trial Court had rightly found the accused guilty but the High<br \/>\nCourt reversed it by discarding the circumstances, as not sufficient for<br \/>\nthe purpose of holding the accused guilty.\n<\/p>\n<p>The law relating to circumstantial evidence has been laid down by this<br \/>\nCourt in several cases. It has been laid down that the circumstances should<br \/>\nbe of such conclusive nature as to exclude every other possibility except<br \/>\nthe accused being guilty of the charged offence. Circumstances which<br \/>\nattracted notice of the High Court were that accused was last seen in the<br \/>\ncompany of the deceased. It was based on the evidence of P.Ws. 7, 8 and 30.<br \/>\nPW-7 was of very weak eye-sight and even, according to her own statement,<br \/>\nshe could not identify a person even if he or she passes nearby. The<br \/>\nhypothetical &#8220;last seen theory&#8221; was pressed into service by the Trial Court<br \/>\nby observing that the accused and PW-7 being of the same village, she could<br \/>\nhave identified him from his speech. No witness stated that the accused had<br \/>\nspoken even a word when he was allegedly seen near the deceased. PW-8 only<br \/>\nstated that she had seen the deceased and PW-7 together. He did not speak<br \/>\nabout accused being present nearby. PW-30&#8217;s evidence is no better. That<br \/>\nbeing go, the last seen theory could not have been pressed into service.<br \/>\nThe other circumstance was the alleged recovery of the incriminating<br \/>\nmaterials. The High Court found it absolutely improbable that the accused<br \/>\nwho was allegedly absconding, would carry the incriminating materials and<br \/>\ngo near the police and present himself so that he could be arrested with<br \/>\nthe incriminating materials. Third circumstance was the recovery of blood<br \/>\nstained articles. This was also discarded by the High Court as the place of<br \/>\noccurrence was easily accessable and seized articles were not established<br \/>\nto be carrying human blood.\n<\/p>\n<p>Above being the position, the tests required to convict a person based on<br \/>\ncircumstantial evidence were not available in the present case. The<br \/>\ncircumstances were not conclusive in nature. The facts established are not<br \/>\nconsistent only with the hypothesis of guilty and in-consistent with the<br \/>\ninnocence of guilty and it has no moral certainty to exclude the<br \/>\npossibility of guilt by any person other than the accused.\n<\/p>\n<p>Above being the position, the High Court&#8217;s well reasoned judgment does not<br \/>\nwarrant interference. The appeals are, accordingly, dismissed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Supreme Court of India State Of Rajasthan vs Khuma on 8 September, 2004 Bench: Arijit Pasayat, C.K. Thakker CASE NO.: Appeal (crl.) 559-560 of 1999 PETITIONER: STATE OF RAJASTHAN RESPONDENT: KHUMA DATE OF JUDGMENT: 08\/09\/2004 BENCH: ARIJIT PASAYAT &amp; C.K. THAKKER JUDGMENT: JUDGMENT 2004 Supp(4) SCR 219 The Judgment of the Court was delivered by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-supreme-court-of-india"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>State Of Rajasthan vs Khuma on 8 September, 2004 - Free Judgements of Supreme Court &amp; High Court | Legal India<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.legalindia.com\/judgments\/state-of-rajasthan-vs-khuma-on-8-september-2004\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"State Of Rajasthan vs Khuma on 8 September, 2004 - Free Judgements of Supreme Court &amp; 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