#014 ACQUITTAL WHERE CORPUS DELICTI HAS NOT BEEN PROVED

CASE NO.: Appeal (civil) 1107 of 2005
PETITIONER: K.T. Palanisamy
RESPONDENT: State of Tamil Nadu
DATE OF JUDGMENT: 11/01/2008
BENCH: S.B. SINHA & DALVEER BHANDARI

TRIAL COURT: Life Imprisonment.
High Court: Confirmation.
Supreme Court: Acquittal.

BLOGGER'S VIEWS
Key elements which the Apex Court examined/observed:

1. Distinction between MAY BE and MUST BE/SHOULD BE

12. It is now well settled that in a case where an offence is said to
have been established on circumstantial evidence alone, indisputably all the links
in the chain must be found to be complete as has been held in Sharad
Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra [AIR 1984 SC 1622] in the
following terms :
A close analysis of this decision would show that
the following conditions must be fulfilled before a
case against an accused can be said to be fully
established:
(1) the circumstances from which the conclusion
of guilt is to be drawn should be fully established.
It may be noted here that this Court indicated that
the circumstances concerned 'must or should' and
not 'may be' established. There is not only a
grammatical but a legal distinction between 'may
be proved' and 'must be or should be proved as was
held by this Court in Shivaji Sahebrao Bobade v.
State of Maharashtra where the following
observations were made:
certainly, it is a primary principle that the accused
must be and not merely may be guilty before a
Court can convict, and the mental distance
between 'may be' and 'must be' is long and divides
vague conjectures from sure conclusions.
(2) the facts so established should be consistent
only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the
accused, that is to say, they should not be
explainable on any other hypothesis except that the
accused is guilty.
(3) the circumstances should be of a conclusive
nature and tendency.
(4) they should exclude every possible hypothesis
except the one to be proved, and
(5) there must be a chain of evidence so complete
as not to leave any reasonable ground for the
conclusion consistent with the innocence of the
accused and must show that in all human
probability the act must have been done by the
accused.
153. These five golden principles, if we may say
so, constitute the panchsheel of the proof of a case
based on circumstantial evidence.

2. Need for proving "Corpus delicti" (material evidence such as dead body):

13. In this case, corpus delicti has not been proved. The same need
not be but the death as a fact must be proved. Even death has not been proved in
this case. No piece of mortal remains of the deceased was found. If the
prosecution witnesses are to be believed they had no reason to suspect the
appellant herein at the relevant point of time.