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Informist, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025

 

NEW DELHI – More than nine years after a trial court in Maharashtra convicted and sentenced Chandrabhan Sudam Sanap to death in the rape and murder of a 23-year-old software engineer, the Supreme Court on Tuesday acquited him in the case. The apex court said that on the basis of available evidence, it was extremely unsafe to sustain a conviction against Sanap. 

 

The Bench of Justices B.R. Gavai, Prashant Kumar Mishra and K.V. Viswanathan said that the prosecution had not established its case beyond reasonable doubt. "Hence, we are constrained to come to the sole irresistible conclusion that the appellant is not guilty of the offences for which he has been charged," said the apex court.

 

The court said that the facts in the case "cumulatively constrain" the bench to conclude that there are gaping holes in the prosecution story leading to the irresistible conclusion that there is "something more than what meets the eye in this case". "While the old adage, witness may lie but not the circumstances, may be correct, however, the circumstances adduced, as held by this Court, should be fully established," said the top court.

 

There is a legal distinction between "may be proved" and "must be or should be proved" as held by the apex court's rulings earlier, said the bench. "The circumstances relied upon when stitched together do not lead to the sole hypothesis of the guilt of the accused, and we do not find that the chain is so complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused," said the apex court.

 

The software engineer had boarded a train from Vijayawada Railway station, which was to reach Mumbai early morning on Jan. 5, 2014. However, she went missing, and her decomposed body was found in the bushes near the Eastern Express Highway. Sanap's name had surfaced after police teams questioned nearly 2,500 people and studied the footage from 35 closed-circuit television cameras, leading to his arrest. In October 2015, the trial court sentenced Sanap to death penalty, which was upheld by the Bombay High Court in 2018.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Deepshikha Bhardwaj

 

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