Quality of witness, not quantity matters, SC upholds conviction in murder case [Read Judgment]

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the conviction and sentence of life term awarded to three convicts for murder of four members of a family in Uttar Pradesh in 2007, while ruling that it is not the quantity but the quality of witnesses which mattered.

A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Vikram Nath noted that one of the daughters of the deceased Vijay Pal Singh had seen the assailants, including her own cousins, murdering their family members and also causing injury to one of them and wisely did not speak out anything in their presence and allowed them to remain in the dark that she had actually seen them committing the crime.

The court rejected contention of the convicts that another injured was not examined by the prosecution.

It is the discretion of the prosecution to lead as much evidence as is necessary for proving the charge. It is not the quantity of the witnesses but the quality of witnesses which matters, the bench said.

The bench said that daughters of one of the deceased, who was examined as a prosecution witness in the case, was injured during the incident, was a fully reliable witness and has stated the things in natural course".

The judgment came on a clutch of appeals, including those filed by the convicts, challenging the February 2012 Allahabad High Court judgment, which affirmed their conviction in the case. The court noted that one of the convicts, Ajai, has since died.

The trial court had awarded the death sentence to the accused but the High Court while affirming their conviction commuted it to life term. The state government also filed an appeal for restoration of the death sentence.

In the apex court, one of the convicts had argued that there were several discrepancies and inconsistencies in the evidence.

However, the bench said, We need not go into details as the same are minor and do not have any impact on the findings recorded by the courts below.

With regard to the Uttar Pradesh government's appeal, the court said sound and cogent reasons were given by the High Court for commuting the death sentence into life term.

The incident had occurred in August 2007, in Ghaziabad district where a man, Vijay Pal Singh, his wife, his son, and son-in-law were found murdered at their home with their necks cut with sharp edged weapons.

The prosecution stated the appellants being close relatives and neighbours of the deceased, in order to gain property, settled their score of enmity by committing a ghastly act of brutally murdering four members of the same family and also attempting to murder the injured witness Smt Pinky who had been attacked and assaulted on her neck and in the act of protecting herself she lost a couple of fingers of her upper hand.

[Read Judgment]