KARAN SINGH & ORS. V. STATE OF U.P, SC (CRIMINAL APPEAL No.

327 OF
2022)

In a judgment authored by justice Indira Banerjee the supreme court of India held that fact
that the trial/appeal should have taken years and that other accused should have died during
the appeal cannot be a ground for acquittal of appellant in a murder case coupled with
reiterating an important principle that prosecution is not required to prove its case beyond all
IOTA of doubt consequently the appeal is dismissed by the apex court.

In para 46 of the judgment where the court laid down major reasoning to reach the conclusion
and dismissed the appeal “The Appellant’s presence has been proved by two eyewitnesses. It
has been proved by the eyewitnesses, that the Appellant carried a rifle. But PW2 and PW3
deposed that all the accused had opened fire. The prosecution was required to prove its case
beyond reasonable doubt, which it has done, and not beyond all iota of doubt. The fact that
one of the injured witnesses may not have mentioned the name of Appellant Karan Singh
does not demolish the evidence of the other witnesses.”

Mr. Ajith Kumar Sinha learned senior counsel for appellant argued that the Trial Court erred
in holding that the aforesaid material factors were minor contradictions and minor lapses on
the part of the Prosecution and proceeded to convict all the accused persons guilty beyond
doubt. Mr. Sinha argued that the Trial Court had completely ignored the chain of evidence to
wrongly conclude that the accused persons were guilty, particularly the Appellant Karan
Singh along with a ground to release the convicted person on long time taken during trial and
death of other accused.

On the other hand, As argued by Mr. Tyagi, there may have been some minor discrepancies
in the evidence of the PW’s. However, all material particulars have been corroborated. PW2
and PW3 corroborated the prosecution story and ideally this court shouldn’t interfere with
concurrent findings of trial and high courts.

Brief facts of the present case was that the appellant Karan Singh and others accused in a
murder case of brahma pal Singh in 1980 the trial court in 1983 convicted the accused
persons for murder and awarded life imprisonment to appellants then they moved to
Allahabad high court in a criminal appeal due to long pendency of the matter all accused
except Karan Singh died and accordingly the appeal was dismissed by the high court in 2018
when the matter reached the supreme court of India the court said that we find no grounds to
interfere with the concurrent findings of the Trial Court and the High Court and opined that
trial took years and death of other accused not a ground for acquittal, Appeal dismissed.