A man has been acquitted by the Bombay High Court\u00a0convicted by a lower court for murdering his wife by setting her afire eight years ago.<\/p>\n
Hearing the appeal filed by Pune-resident\u00a0Bhanudas\u00a0Thite,\u00a0a division Bench of Mr Justice V K\u00a0Tahilramani\u00a0and Mr Justice P\u00a0D Kode\u00a0recently set aside the 2005 order of the Pune\u00a0trial court which had sentenced him to life imprisonment.<\/p>\n
According to the prosecution, Mr Thite\u00a0lost his job in 2004, and consequently he and wife Indubai\u00a0often quarrelled. On 3 July, 2004, he poured kerosene on her and set her on fire. And after that he set himself on fire too.<\/p>\n
Though Mr Thite\u00a0survived, his wife suffered more than 90 per cent burns and died after three days in a hospital. In her dying declaration, Indubai\u00a0stated that her husband had set her on fire.<\/p>\n
The High Court, however, noted that medical case papers had \u201csuicidal burns\u201d written in the column ‘history’,\u00a0followed by a stroke, and the word \u201chomicidal\u201d. The word \u201csuicidal\u201d had not been struck out and \u201chomicidal\u201d had not been initiated (if it was intended to be a correction).<\/p>\n
Moreover, \u201chomicidal\u201d was written in a lighter ink, the judges noted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn view of this…we\u00a0are not inclined to place any reliance on the word ‘homicidal’….\u00a0when Indubai\u00a0was first admitted in the hospital, history was given as \u201csuicidal\u201d burns and the fact that her husband also poured kerosene on himself is stated in the papers,\u201d the Bench said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThus it appears that both appellant and deceased tried to commit suicide, and thereafter the appellant has been falsely implicated in this case,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The judges noted that though Indubai\u00a0was in the hospital for more than three days, the dying declaration was not recorded by a special executive magistrate. \u201cThis also creates a doubt about the genuineness of the prosecution case.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dying declaration of Indubai\u00a0was recorded at 12.15 p.m.\u00a0on the day of the incident. The medical case papers showed that she was admitted at 11.50 a.m, and her condition was not satisfactory. A doctor informed police of the case at 12.05 p.m.\u00a0The court wondered how, in a span of ten minutes, Indubai\u00a0gave her dying declaration to police.<\/p>\n
It was not possible that the police constable could have reached the hospital, got the victim examined by doctors, satisfied himself that she was in a fit condition to give statement and then proceeded to record her statement at 12.15 p.m,\u00a0the High Court said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at the entire evidence on record, we are inclined to grant benefit of doubt to the appellant,\u201d the judges said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A man has been acquitted by the Bombay High Court\u00a0convicted by a lower court for murdering his wife by setting her afire eight years ago. Hearing the appeal filed by Pune-resident\u00a0Bhanudas\u00a0Thite,\u00a0a division Bench of Mr Justice V K\u00a0Tahilramani\u00a0and Mr Justice P\u00a0D Kode\u00a0recently set aside the 2005 order of the Pune\u00a0trial court which had sentenced him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[47741,23139,23137,306,23136,23140,23138],"class_list":["post-27717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-law-news","tag-bombay-high-court","tag-homicidal","tag-mr-thite","tag-murder","tag-pune-resident-bhanudas-thite","tag-special-executive-magistrate","tag-wifes-murder"],"yoast_head":"\n