CUTTACK: After spending 19 years behind the bars on charges of killing his foster daughter, a 69-year-old man was acquitted by the Orissa High Court on Tuesday.
The division bench of Justice SK Sahoo and Justice Chittaranjan Dash said, the death of the girl was undeniably tragic and the cause of death clearly homicidal in nature, but there was no satisfactory proof of guilt against Rajendra Jain and he has to be given the benefit of doubt.
The incident occurred at Gandhinagar in Belpahar of Jharsuguda district on December 27, 2005.
Newly-wed 19-year-old Pinky Jain along with her husband was residing with Jain and Manju, who were her foster father and mother. The family earned their livelihood by collecting scrap iron and discarded materials such as polythene and tins from dust bins. Jain was accused of killing Pinky, by stabbing her several times when she was alone in their house. He was arrested after he surrendered at the Brajrajnagar police station on January 2, 2006 and had since been in jail.
The court of additional sessions judge had convicted Jain and sentenced him to imprisonment for life on November 28, 2006. Though he filed a JCRLA against the trial court judgement on February 24, 2007, the Orissa HC Legal Services Committee had to assign advocate Bikash Chandra Parija, a lawyer in its panel, to represent him only on September 25, 2023 after finding that no one was appearing on his behalf.
In the judgement delivered on Tuesday, the bench said “glaring gaps and inconsistencies render the prosecution’s case insufficient to establish the guilt of the appellant with the degree of certainty the law requires, and thereby entails a benefit of doubt in favour of the appellant.”
“We are of the considered view that the prosecution has not been able to prove the charge against the appellant beyond all reasonable doubt and the evidence on record falls short of the standard required to fasten criminal liability,” the bench observed.
The bench said the last seen theory was not established by consistent or corroborated evidence. The blood-stained pant allegedly recovered from the spot was not proven to belong to Jain and the motive remains speculative in light of the postmortem findings which ruled out sexual assault and the recovery of weapons is also doubtful, it observed.
Jain is presently lodged at Sambalpur Circle Jail.