NEW DELHI: A criminal trial extends beyond a mere adversarial contest between the prosecution and the accused, and the court's ultimate obligation is to uncover the truth and ensure the fair administration of justice, the Supreme Court said on Monday while acquitting a man convicted of raping a five-year-old girl.
A bench of Justices Sandeep Mehta and Manmohan said the trial court as well as the Rajasthan High Court fell in grave error in convicting the man and affirming his conviction respectively.
The top court said the findings recorded by the trial court and affirmed by the high court, holding that the prosecution case stands on credible and reliable evidence, are ex-facie untenable in facts and in law.
"A criminal trial is not merely an adversarial contest between the prosecution and the accused. The ultimate obligation of the court is to discover the truth and ensure that the finding of guilt rests upon legally-admissible and reliable evidence. The court is not expected to remain a mute spectator where an aspect of evidence bearing directly upon the guilt or innocence of the accused is left unattended.
"The role of the court is not confined to passively recording the evidence as presented by the parties, it is required to ensure that the material evidence necessary for a just adjudication is properly brought on record," the bench said.
It said the prosecution case, thus, suffers from serious infirmities regarding the identification of the accused, the grave contradiction between the medical evidence pertaining to the age of the injuries and the alleged time of the incident as set out in the FIR and the depositions of the prosecution witnesses.
The top court also noted that the man has been in custody for more than nine years.
The Rajasthan High Court had upheld the conviction of the man for raping the five-year-old girl, sentencing him to imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life.
The father of the girl got an FIR lodged at the Kekri police station in Ajmer on December 7, 2016, alleging that his wife and two children -- a son aged about 11 years and a daughter aged about five years -- had gone to the house of a relative two days ago to attend a programme.
His wife called him at his workplace and enquired whether their daughter was with him. When he replied in the negative, his wife raised a concern that the child was not traceable, the FIR said.
The complainant rushed back to the village and started searching for his daughter. After some time, two persons came to his house with the girl. His wife was
present at that time and noticed that the girl was injured, the FIR said.
The girl told her parents that she was sexually assaulted and the man was arrested on February 5, 2017.
The counsel appearing on behalf of the man submitted before the top court that he was falsely implicated at the behest of the local MLA, with whom he had an enmity.
