In an important judgment on the hotly-debated legal question regarding “suspicion” of a murder by the person last seen with the victim, the Supreme Court has held that in such cases the inquest report prepared by the police soon after detecting the murder is very crucial as “genesis” of the crimes emerges form it.
Since the inquest report contains the statement of the person last seen with the victim or being present at the scene of the crime, therefore, it was a very crucial evidence for examination of the “suspected” accused or other witnesses during the course of the trial, the apex court said.
“The genesis of the crime should ordinarily emerge from the inquest report, specially when it is in respect of a patent fact,” related to the murder attributed to the person or persons last seen with the victim, said a bench of Justices A.K. Ganguly and J.S. Khehar while acquitting two accused from Kerala for the reasons that the prosecution failed to prove the charge against them during the trial as per the inquest report.
The top court gave the benefit of doubt to Madhu Kalikutty Panicker and Sibi Bhaskaran in the May 8, 1998 murder of Padmini Devi at her residence in Veliyanad village.
They were “suspected” of the crime by the police as they were her neighbours and were last seen with her. The police had accused them of smothering and then drowning her body in a nearby “ghat” after robbing her of the gold ornaments. But as per the inquest report prepared by the investigating officer after the recovery of her body, it contained the graphic details about the gold ornaments — a chain around her neck, bangles in her left hand and earrings in her ear - found intact.
Even her son had confirmed the presence of the ornaments on her body.
Since the police claimed that the ornaments were recovered by the investigators from Madhu and Sibi, therefore, the charge that they were the accused stood established against them. The top court “ridiculed” the prosecution theory in the light of the inquest report, which presented a different scenario.