NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has acquitted two men sentenced to death by the Uttarakhand trial court and High Court for the alleged rape and murder of a 55-year-old woman in Uttarakhand on the grounds that the prosecution failed to establish a complete and reliable chain of circumstances connecting them with the crime.
“The FSL (Forensic Science Laboratory) report merely records the presence of semen traces in the vaginal swab collected during the postmortem examination and does not, in the absence of any corroborative material, establish the appellants’ (Convicts) complicity in the alleged offence,” said a three-judge Bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sandeep Mehta, and Vijay Bishnoi.
Setting aside the judgments of the trial court and the HC, the SC said: “No DNA examination or scientific profiling was undertaken to establish the identity of the source of semen or to connect the same with either of the appellants”.
The court said the prosecution also failed to lead any evidence regarding the probable age or duration of the semen traces detected in the vaginal swab. “In the absence of such scientific evidence, no definite inference could be drawn that the deceased-victim had been subjected to the appeals filed by the murder convicts,” it said.
The judgment stated the prosecution’s case was marred by serious infirmities as regards DNA examination or scientific profiling linking the biological evidence with the accused persons.
The prosecution in the trial court and HC sought to establish the guilt primarily through two circumstances, the “last seen” theory and alleged recoveries made during the investigation. The top court eventually discarded these versions and acquitted the two accused.