20 years after conviction, man set free in murder case

MUMBAI: More than two decades after a man was convicted of murder, the Bombay high court has set him free. Abdul Hussain was charged for the murder of his brother-in-law Abdul Khan at Dharavi in 1989. In 1992, a sessions court in Mumbai convicted Hussain for life. He has been on bail since July 1992 after spending three years in jail.
The police said Hussain had stabbed Khan to death with a gupti (knife) but they failed to prove the motive.The trial court had relied on an extra-judicial confession of a witness who claimed that Hussain had visited his house and asked him to hide the weapon. Hussain’s conviction was on the recovery of the weapon based on the witness’s statement, but the prosecution also failed to prove that the blood on the knife was Khan’s.
Besides, the mother of the witness had given a contradictory statement, that it was a black tube and not a knife that was given to her son to keep.
A division bench of Justices P V Hardas and Abhay Thipsay acquitted Hussain on October 9. The judgment is yet to be made available. But the court accepted the submissions and arguments put forth by amicus curiae Swapana Kode whom it had appointed. The amicus (a lawyer appointed to assist the court on the law and facts of the case) pointed out to the court that all the eyewitness had turned hostile.
Witnesses, on whose testimony Hussain was convicted, lacked corroboration. As both portrayed different stories, the accused deserved benefit of doubt, the advocate said. Besides, she said that an extra-judicial confession relied upon ought not to have been used as it is a weak link. A number of apex court judgments have held that an extra-constitutional confession was a weak link in the evidence.
The high court, finding no cogent evidence, acquitted Hussain.