Prayagraj: Acquitting a man convicted of murdering his wife and two sons in 2017, the Allahabad high court has ruled that in cases based solely on circumstantial evidence, the prosecution must establish a reasonable and convincing motive, saying it would be unsafe to convict an accused in the absence of a credible and compelling motive.The observation came while the court acquitted Babu, who had been convicted of murdering his wife and sons in Mathura in 2017.In its July 13 order, a division bench comprising Justice JJ Munir and Justice Sanjiv Kumar allowed the appeal filed by Babu and directed that he be released from jail forthwith.“In cases resting entirely on circumstantial evidence, it is always safe to examine whether the alleged assailant had a reasonable motive to commit the crime. In the absence of a credible and compelling motive, a conviction based solely on circumstantial evidence would be unsafe,” the bench observed.According to the case records, an FIR was lodged on Sept 3, 2017, by the accused’s aunt, who stated that when she visited his house that morning, she found the bodies of his wife and two sons. The accused was not present at the house, and all the victims had sustained injuries inflicted with a sharp-edged weapon.Later the same day, the accused was arrested in Delhi. Police claimed that he was wearing a bloodstained shirt at the time of his arrest.On Jan 27, 2022, a Mathura trial court convicted him and sentenced him to life imprisonment. He subsequently challenged the conviction before the high court.The prosecution also claimed that the murder weapon had been recovered at the instance of the accused. However, the high court noted that the weapon was recovered from an open place and that no independent witness testified that the accused had disclosed its location to the police.“In our opinion, this incriminating circumstance of recovery of the weapon of murder at the pointing out of the appellant has to be discarded,” the court said.The bench further observed that the prosecution had failed to establish any motive for the crime.“The testimony offered by the prosecution does not attribute any motive to the appellant to commit such a gruesome crime. There is some mention of a motive in the appellant’s statement recorded by the police under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), but the prosecution could not produce any evidence of it before the court,” it said.The court observed: “We are aware of the well-settled principle that the absence of motive alone is not a ground to reject a prosecution based entirely on circumstantial evidence where guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt. However, where the circumstances otherwise fail to establish the prosecution case, the absence of motive, as in the present case, would certainly weigh in favour of the appellant.”
