The Supreme Court has held in a judgment that the evidence of interested or inimical witnesses cannot be discarded merely on the ground that they are partisan. Instead, such testimonies have to be scrutinised with care, a three-judge Bench headed by Justice B.R. Gavai observed.
“Merely because some of the witnesses are interested or inimical witnesses, their evidence cannot be totally discarded. The only requirement is that their evidence has to be scrutinised with greater care and circumspection,” the court noted in the recent judgment.
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The verdict came in a petition filed by a murder convict who sought the commutation of his death penalty to life imprisonment. The incident dates back to 2003 in Muzzafarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, where three people were shot dead in an incident of indiscriminate firing caused by local political rivalry. One of the accused persons, Madan, was sentenced to death and the Allahabad High Court had confirmed the capital punishment in 2017.
The Supreme Court commuted the death penalty to life imprisonment without remission for 20 years, referring to the advanced age of Madan and his good conduct in prison while saying that there was a possibility for his reformation.
While confirming his guilt of the murders, the court reasoned that the prosecution had not produced any evidence to prove that Madan could not be rehabilitated, and deserved the death penalty awarded in crimes of the ‘rarest of rare’ category.
“There is no reason to believe that he cannot be reformed or rehabilitated,” the judgment said.
The court also held that a past conviction cannot be held to show that the convict was beyond remorse and deserved the gallows.
The Bench however dismissed the defence plea that the evidence in the case was inconclusive as the witnesses were villagers.
“Rustic witnesses cannot be expected to remember every minute detail unlike an educated witness… The basic principle of appreciation of evidence of a rustic witness who is not educated and comes from a poor strata of society is that the evidence of such a witness should be appreciated as a whole,” the court said.
