KOCHI: The Kerala High Court has observed that when public opinion influences an investigation, its very course gets diverted with 'exasperating' results. A Division Bench comprising Justice K Vinod Chandran and Justice Ziyad Rahman AA made the observation while acquitting Mani and Rajan of Agali in Palakkad, life convicts in the rape and murder of a tribal woman on May 30, 2005.
The Bench observed that a tribal woman was murdered and the suspect was her confidant who was from the same community. "The community rose in arms against the implication of their own and the police removed him from the array of suspects and proceeded against two other suspects from a different community with a higher caste status thus alleging offences not only under the Indian Penal Code but also under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989," the court observed. The protest was led by the then panchayat member against arraying a tribe as one of the accused.
The prosecutor submitted that the entire case of the prosecution was built on the evidence of Jungan, who "surrendered" at a police station claiming that he had murdered her. Initially, he was one of the suspects but nothing had come out in the investigation to array him as an accused. The person last seen with the deceased was Jungan and he deposed that he left the deceased alone for 20 minutes when she was raped and murdered by the accused.
The court pointed out that the entire narration and the conduct of Jungan was highly suspicious, especially looking at the contradictions he was specifically confronted with in cross-examination. His version of the actual incident is very shaky and full of inconsistencies. He had stated that while he and the deceased sat down near the pathway, they both drank the arrack they had with them.
The scientific analysis of the contents of the stomach and the internal organs of the deceased does not reveal the presence of any ethyl alcohol. The court also said that the factum of rape having been committed on the deceased leads to a reasonable inference that there were others, one or more persons, involved.
The court said, "We find nothing to connect the accused to the crime other than the testimony of Jungan, whom we suspect, as being interested in either saving himself or covering up the actual facts. The incident happened more than a decade and a half back and that alone inhibits us from ordering a further investigation, which would be futile especially in the absence of any scientific evidence. Again a woman is molested and murdered and the perpetrators are roaming free; the poor soul is not avenged. We see absolutely no way other than to acquit the accused."