CUTTACK: The legal sanctity of a dying declaration stems from the belief that a person on the verge of death is unlikely to fabricate a statement, given the solemnity and gravity of their situation, the Orissa High Court has said in a judgment.
“The proximity to death itself serves as a powerful guarantee of the truthfulness of the statement regarding the causes or circumstances leading to the person’s demise. Thus, the dying declarations made by the deceased can be accorded a sacrosanct status as a piece of evidence,” the division bench of Justice SK Sahoo and Justice Chittaranjan Dash observed.
The bench gave the observation recently while dismissing a jail criminal appeal (JCRLA) filed by a man convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for life by a trial court for murder of his wife in Phulbani in 2009. The man had poured kerosene over his wife’s body and set her on fire. The woman succumbed to her burn injuries. Her dying declaration before the medical officer at the local hospital was used by the trial court to convict her husband.
While confirming the trial court judgement of November 12, 2009, the bench said, “Despite the legal principle that a dying declaration does not require corroboration, the evidence presented in this case completes the chain of circumstances required to establish the offence under Section 302 IPC.”
“The deceased’s dying declaration, a cornerstone of this trial, as recorded by the medical officer, explicitly states that the appellant demanded money from her. Upon her refusal, he resorted to the heinous act of pouring kerosene over her and setting her ablaze. This sequence of events crystallises a clear motive for the appellant’s reprehensible actions,” the bench further observed in its judgment on July 4.