New Delhi: The Supreme Court has reaffirmed that when an offence takes place inside the privacy of a house, the burden shifts onto the inmates of that house to offer a cogent explanation of how the victim died. The Court delivered this ruling while dismissing a criminal appeal filed by a man convicted of murdering his wife, who had been repeatedly subjected to dowry demands.
A Bench of Justices Prashant Kumar Mishra and K. V. Viswanathan upheld the conviction of the appellant, Gour Acharjee, under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, affirming the concurrent findings of the Trial Court and the Gauhati High Court.
The deceased, Soma Acharjee, was the appellant’s wife. She died on 16 June 2007. Her father lodged a First Information Report on the same day, stating that within months of the marriage, Soma was subjected to continuous torture over demands for dowry, primarily a motorcycle and cash.
The Court noted that Soma had repeatedly pleaded with her parents to rescue her. She even came to her parental home on multiple occasions. Each time, village elders were called in, and a compromise was brokered. Panchayat meetings were held, resolutions were drawn up, and Soma was sent back to her matrimonial home.
The Court opened its judgment with pointed words: “Could the life of young Soma Acharjee have been saved? Did the fear of societal opprobrium result in Soma being thrown to the wolves? These questions will remain hypothetical.” The Court observed that a false sense of optimism had engulfed Soma’s family and that their hopes were ultimately betrayed.
The final panchayat meeting was held on 27 May 2007. It was resolved in writing that if further torture occurred, the matter would be taken up as per law. Less than three weeks later, Soma was found dead, her body hanging from the ceiling.
The appellant had claimed that Soma committed suicide by hanging. The Court rejected this defence entirely. The postmortem was conducted by Dr. Bhanu Bhusan Deb, Medical Officer at Boxanagar Primary Health Centre. His findings were unambiguous.
Dr. Deb found multiple ante mortem injuries, including haematomas on the chest, the jaw, and the occipital area. There was no typical ligature mark. No ecchymosis was present. There was no congestion of the conjunctiva, no protruded tongue, and no fecal matter in the anus. These are signs ordinarily expected in a genuine hanging death, and all of them were absent.
The doctor concluded that Soma had been struck on the head with a blunt weapon like a hammer and was thereafter put on hanging. The Court referred to authoritative texts on medical jurisprudence, including Modi’s Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology and Dr. C.K. Parikh’s Text Book of Medical Jurisprudence, both of which recognise that killing a victim and then suspending the body is not uncommon and must be carefully evaluated.
On the prosecution witnesses, the Court noted that Soma’s father, PW-7, gave a detailed account of the persistent torture. He described how he had met every demand, including delivering a motorcycle, and how Soma continued to call him describing escalating abuse. Her mother corroborated his evidence fully.
A neighbour, PW-14, gave crucial testimony. He deposed that the evening before Soma’s death, he saw her sitting on the verandah while an altercation raged inside the house. He heard cries at 1:30 AM. The next morning, at around 6:35 AM, he heard Soma cry out “Ma… go” twice. Minutes later, he found the appellant lying face down on the bed and Soma’s body hanging from the ceiling. He stated he saw no stool or any object near the body and wondered how she could have hanged herself.
The Court found PW-14’s testimony credible. It held that any suggestion of enmity between him and the appellant’s family was insufficient to discredit him in a case of this gravity. His presence at the scene was natural, being a neighbour, and his account was consistent throughout.
On the question of law, the Court relied on the landmark judgment in Trimukh Maroti Kirkan v. State of Maharashtra, (2006) 10 SCC 681, and quoted from it as follows: “Where an offence like murder is committed in secrecy inside a house, the initial burden to establish the case would undoubtedly be upon the prosecution, but the nature and amount of evidence to be led by it to establish the charge cannot be of the same degree as is required in other cases of circumstantial evidence. The burden would be of a comparatively lighter character. In view of Section 106 of the Evidence Act, there will be a corresponding burden on the inmates of the house to give a cogent explanation as to how the crime was committed. The inmates of the house cannot get away by simply keeping quiet and offering no explanation on the supposed premise that the burden to establish its case lies entirely upon the prosecution.”
The Court further applied the settled principle that where a husband is present in the same dwelling when his wife dies and he fails to explain her injuries, that silence is a strong circumstance pointing to his guilt. As the Court noted in Trimukh Maroti Kirkan: “Where an accused is alleged to have committed the murder of his wife and the prosecution succeeds in leading evidence to show that shortly before the commission of crime they were seen together or the offence takes place in the dwelling home where the husband also normally resided, it has been consistently held that if the accused does not offer any explanation as to how the wife received injuries or offers an explanation which is found to be false, it is a strong circumstance which indicates that he is responsible for commission of the crime.”
In the present case, the appellant was present in the dwelling unit when Soma was found dead. This fact was not denied by him, since it was the appellant himself who called Soma’s father to report her death, claiming it was a suicide. When examined under Section 313 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the appellant offered no explanation for the injuries found on the deceased. His defence of suicide was demolished by the overwhelming medical evidence.
While the Trial Court had acquitted the father-in-law and the High Court had acquitted the mother-in-law and brother-in-law on the ground that they were in separate dwelling huts within the same compound, the Court declined to extend any similar benefit to the appellant. The evidence of consistent dowry-related torture was found to be overwhelming, and the Section 498A conviction was also upheld.
The Court dismissed the appeal. Noting that the appellant was absconding, it directed the Director General of Police, Tripura, to immediately constitute a team to trace and apprehend the convict.
Case Title: Gour Acharjee v. The State of Tripura & Ors., Criminal Appeal No. 1803 of 2014
