Overzealous probe as fatal to prosecution as tardy ones: SC | India News
New Delhi: It was a “fraudulent and premeditated investigation” and “a farce case” that led to a son and his wife being wrongly convicted and serving eight years in jail for murdering his elderly parents, and now the Supreme Court has acquitted them.Citing various lapses in the investigation and trial process that landed the two innocents behind bars, a bench of Justice Sanjay Kumar K Vinod Chandran cautioned the police and the courts to follow the accepted procedural rules, when lives are lost or taken and when false allegations are likely to be made to survive.“Excessive investigation is as fatal to prosecution as idleness and delay. Building a case based on public perception and personal prejudice turns into a mess, often endangering an innocent and always setting the culprit free. Here, we have a case of gruesome death of a couple when their house was set on fire and a case of daughter-son-murder. The son takes refuge against the father for not giving him his fair share of the paternal property. took over and the incident culminated in an investigation where the truth was sacrificed on the altar of alleged vengeance, regardless of whether the investigating officer said it was completely indifferent.Advocate Smharhar Singh, appearing for the elder brother of the accused, tried to convince the court that his younger brother and his wife were guilty and the death declaration of the dead couple also proved it. But the bench said that the dying declaration was not reliable as it was not recorded as per law.“The investigation, in our opinion, was a sham and premeditated, informed by every principle of criminal jurisprudence due process. The prosecution, therefore, was a farce, paring of witnesses whose testimonies fell flat. The investigation and prosecution were based on the alleged motive and nothing more,” the bench said.
