NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday found Prabhunath Singh, a Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) leader and former Bihar MP, guilty in a double-murder case of 1995 and reversed his acquittal by lower courts.
Singh is accused of killing Rajendra Rai (18) and Daroga Rai (47) near a polling booth in Chhapra in Bihar in March 1995. A Patna court had acquitted Singh in 2008, citing a lack of evidence, which was upheld by the high court in 2012.
Noting that there is sufficient evidence to show that Singh committed the crime, a bench of Justices SK Kaul, AS Oka, and Vikram Nath directed the Secretary, Department of Home, and the Director General of Police, Bihar to take Singh into custody and produce him before the top court on September 1 for pronouncing the quantum of sentence.
The bench was of the view that the appellate courts failed to take into consideration the conduct of the accused subsequent to the incident and also failed to draw any adverse inference against him with respect to guilt. Coming down heavily upon the trial court and the high court for failure to notice the sensitivity and intricacies of the case, the bench in the 143-page verdict authored by Justice Nath said,
“Both the courts completely shut their eyes to the manner of the investigation, the prosecutor’s role, and the high-handedness of the accused as also the conduct of the presiding officer of the trial court, despite observations and findings having been recorded not only by the administrative judge but also by the division bench deciding habeas corpus petition. They continued with their classical rut of dealing with the evidence in a manner as if it was a normal trial.”
The court also said,“They failed to notice the conduct of the public prosecutor in not even examining the formal witnesses and also that the public prosecutor was acting to the advantage of the accused rather than prosecuting the accused with due diligence and honesty. The presiding officer of the trial court acquitting the accused as also the learned Judge of the High Court dismissing the revision were both well- aware of the facts, legal procedures, as well as the law regarding the appreciation of evidence in a criminal case.” The top court’s order came in a plea filed by Rajendra Rai’s brother, challenging the acquittal.
Also in the top court
CBI told to spell out the common thread in Lankesh, other cases
The Supreme Court on Friday asked the CBI whether there was any “common thread” in the murders of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, CPI leader Govind Pansare, activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh and scholar M M Kalburgi. A bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia posed this query to the probe agency while hearing a plea by Mukta Dabholkar, daughter of Narendra Dabholkar, challenging the April 18 this year order of the Bombay High Court refusing to continue monitoring the investigation in the killing of her father.
CBI’s plea against Lalu’s bail to be heard this month
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