Supreme Court Acquits Man After 16 Years In Minor’s Rape‑Murder Case, Flags 'Serious Doubts' In Prosecution
The top court set aside the conviction of a man accused of sexually assaulting and murdering a minor.
By Sumit Saxena
Published : September 2, 2026 at 10:27 PM IST
New Delhi: Sixteen years and seven months in prison—only to be acquitted. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court set aside the conviction of a man accused of sexually assaulting and murdering a minor, ruling that "missing links" in the prosecution’s chain of evidence made the case unsustainable.
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Sanjeev Sachdeva said: "there are several missing links in the chain of the prosecution case which, in our view, do not establish beyond reasonable doubt that the accused was the person who committed the offence. Since, in our view, prosecution has failed to establish the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt, the benefit of the same has to be given to the accused.”
The bench held that the trial court had erred in convicting and sentencing him to life imprisonment and the Punjab and Haryana High Court also erred in upholding his conviction.
The bench said the theory of the prosecution that the accused and the deceased were last seen together is clearly not borne out from the testimony of the witnesses. The factum of child accompanying the accused at the relevant point of time is also not established by conclusive evidence, it added.
The bench said there was no "plausible explanation" for the accused making an alleged extra-judicial confession to the village sarpanch, with whom neither he nor the victim had any connection.
"Extra-judicial confession is a weak piece of evidence and per se without any independent and cogent corroborative circumstance or evidence cannot be made the sole basis for conviction," the bench said.
The bench said wherever the court, upon due appreciation of the entire prosecution evidence, intends to base a conviction on an extra-judicial confession, it must ensure that the same inspires confidence and is corroborated by other prosecution evidence.
"If, however, the extra-judicial confession suffers from material discrepancies or inherent improbabilities and does not appear to be cogent as per the prosecution version, it may be difficult for the court to base a conviction on such a confession. In such circumstances, the court would be fully justified in ruling such evidence out of consideration," it said.
The bench said furthermore, although semen was detected on the underwear of the victim, there was no DNA test conducted to match the semen found on the underwear of the accused and the semen obtained from the rectal swab of the deceased. It said that the trial court held that, since the accused was not married, there was no explanation given by him to explain the presence of semen in his underwear.
"Further, since the prosecution has failed to establish any link between the semen found on the underwear of the accused and that found in the rectal swab of the victim, the onus could not have been shifted to the accused to establish that there was no connection. Without any evidence produced by the prosecution, the High Court has presumed both to be the same and placed the onus upon the accused to establish that they were different," said the bench.
The bench said prosecution has clearly failed to establish beyond any reasonable doubt, the connection between the accused and the victim; presence of the victim in the company of the accused at the relevant point of time and even the very presence of the accused or any connection of the accused with the place of the incident.
"There are serious doubts regarding the veracity of the prosecution case. This doubt is further fortified by the testimony of the prosecution witnesses who deposed that the accused was brought by the police on 12.03.2007 i.e. two days prior to the alleged extra judicial confession," said the bench.
The bench noted that the victim went missing on March 11, 2007, and his body was discovered the next morning and the prosecution claimed that slippers of the deceased along with an open packet of namkeen were seized from the spot.
The bench noted the seizure was made on March 12, 2007, when the story of alleged purchase of a packet of namkeen by the appellant emerged only on March 14, after he allegedly made the confessional statement.
The bench noted that there is no such evidence to link the packet of namkeen allegedly recovered from the spot with the packet of namkeen allegedly bought by the accused from the shop of the prosecution witness.
The bench said the prosecution’s case was that the appellant was last seen with the victim, and it was alleged that he committed unnatural sexual assault and then smothered the boy to death before throwing the body in a well.
The bench noted that when it had reserved the judgment in the matter, it had directed that the appellant be released forthwith from prison unless his continued incarceration was lawfully required in connection with any other case. “Said order is hereby reaffirmed,” it said.
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