The Delhi high court has asked a lower court to re-judge a murder case in which the accused got convicted and sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment due to the denial of an opportunity to cross-examine several witnesses to prove his innocence.
Instead of setting aside the lower court judgement, a division bench comprising Justices S. Ravindra Bhat and Gyan Prakash Mittal said, “This court ordered re-judging of the case after allowing convict Deepak, awarded life imprisonment, to examine five witnesses to prove his innocence.”
The court noted that denial of opportunity to an accused to examine witnesses led to the conviction of Deepak in a murder case and was a violation of his right to “fair trial”.
Without dealing with merits of the case, the high court directed the lower court to ensure presence of the accused and re-judge the case “preferably within four months”.
After going through the facts and circumstances of the case, the high court said, “We are of the opinion that trial court’s closing appellant’s right to cross-examine PW-1 to PW-4 and PW-7 (witnesses) prejudiced him resulting in violation of his right to a fair trial.”
Deepak, in his plea, said that he was not given an opportunity to examine witnesses. He along with a co-accused was awarded life imprisonment for allegedly stabbing to death Firoz in 2009.
He further claimed that he was convicted by the trial court, as his earlier lawyer did not appear in his defence and later his other lawyer was not allowed by the lower court to examine the witnesses.