Bombay High Court acquits man who spent eight years in prison in a murder case

The Bombay high court recently acquitted a 28-year-old man sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007 for murdering a woman at Borivli. The court acquitted the man holding that the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.

A division bench of justices P V Hardas and Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi was hearing an appeal filed by Rupesh Shetty (28), challenging a sessions court order of April 2007, convicting him for murdering a 32-year-old woman, identified as Seva Dhakade.

As per the police, Shetty, on April 12, 2003, had a fight with the victim and assaulted her with a hammer and killed her at her residence in Borivli. The prosecution's case rested on the evidence of a few neighbours and a passer-by who heard the victim scream for help.

However, the court, after perusing the evidence, said the prosecution has failed to bring "cogent, convincing and reliable evidence" on record against the appellant to prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The prime consideration for the court to acquit Shetty was that out of the 10 prosecution witnesses, nine had turned hostile and the evidence of the remaining one was not reliable.

The bench said, "It is not that conviction cannot rest on the testimony of a solitary eyewitness, but then, evidence of such an eyewitness has to be cogent, consistent and wholly reliable. In this case, the evidence of the sole eyewitness is not found to be of such sterling worth that without corroboration from any other source it can be relied upon to prove the guilt of the accused."

The court thus ordered the release of Shetty, who has been lodged in Kolhapur prison since his conviction.