Motive necessary for commission of crime if no eyewitness: Supreme Court

PTI, Jul 22, 2023, 2:51 PM IST

New Delhi: The prosecution will have to establish motive for commission of crime if there is no eyewitness of an incident, the Supreme Court has said while acquitting a man convicted in a 2008 murder case.

A bench of justices Vikram Nath and Ahsanuddin Amanullah noted that all the witnesses have stated that there was no enmity between the petitioner and the deceased.

“Once there is no eyewitness of the incident, the prosecution will have to establish a motive for the commission of the crime inasmuch as in a case of direct evidence, motive may not have a major role,” the bench said.

“If there is no motive setup or proved and there are direct eyewitnesses, motive may loose its importance but in the present case as admittedly no one has seen the occurrence, the motive has an important role to play,” it said.

The observations came while hearing a plea by a man challenging an order of the Chhattisgarh High Court which confirmed his conviction under section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code and and the sentence to undergo life imprisonment along with fine.

According to the prosecution, the uncle of the deceased lodged a complaint that his nephew, while he was returning home, was assaulted by the appellant.
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He further claimed that when he rushed to the place of occurrence, he saw the accused running away and the murder weapon was lying there.

The top court said the testimony of the deceased’s uncle was not reliable and could not have formed the basis of conviction.

It said apparently, he was influenced by a sarpanch whose active participation in the proceedings subsequent to the incident cannot be ruled out.

“The medical evidence did not support the prosecution case as the weapon of assault could not have caused injury on the deceased as noticed in the postmortem report,” the court observed.

“There was no motive as to why the appellant would commit the murder of an acquaintance and a friend for no reason. The defence version that the deceased was under the influence of alcohol and could have tripped and fallen on a sharp object resulting into the ante-mortem injury reported in the post-mortem was quite possible,” the bench said.