STATE OF GUJARAT vs DINESH @ LOT SHRAVAN SONKAR

R/CR.A/2301/2026 JUDGMENT DATED: 16/10/2026
(GJHC240693102026)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF GUJARAT AT AHMEDABAD
R/CRIMINAL APPEAL (AGAINST ACQUITTAL) NO. 2301 of 2026

FOR APPROVAL AND SIGNATURE:


HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE ILESH J. VORA sd/-

and
HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE R. T. VACHHANI sd/-

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Approved for Reporting Yes No
no
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STATE OF GUJARAT
Versus
DINESH @ LOT SHRAVAN SONKAR
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Appearance:
MR LB DABHI ADDITIONAL PUBLIC PROSECUTOR for the Appellant(s) No.
1
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CORAM: HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE ILESH J. VORA
and
HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE R. T. VACHHANI

Date : 16/10/2026

ORAL JUDGMENT
(PER : HONOURABLE MR. JUSTICE R. T. VACHHANI)
1. Being aggrieved and dissatisfied by the judgment and order
dated 09.04.2026 passed by the learned Principal District and
Sessions Judge, Navsari in Sessions Case No.101 of 2023,
whereby the learned Sessions Judge, by extending benefit of
doubt in exercise of powers under Section 235(1) of the Criminal
Procedure Code (for short, ‘Cr.P.C.’), 1973, acquitted the accused
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of the offences punishable under Section 302 of the Indian Penal
Code (for short, ‘I.P.C.’), 1860 and Section 135 of the Gujarat
Police Act (for short, ‘G.P. Act’), 1951, the present appeal under
Section 419(4) of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (for
short, ‘BNSS’), 2023 has been preferred by the appellant herein.
2. For brevity and convenience, the parties are referred to as
per their original status before the learned Sessions Court.
2.1 Brief facts of the case are as under:
3. The respondent-accused, Dinesh alias Lot Shravan Sonkar,
has an elder sister, Mamta alias Guddi Shravan Sonkar. Prior to
her marriage, she was in a relationship with Dharmendra, the
deceased, who is the elder brother of the complainant, Chhotu
Shivkumar Sonkar. That relationship had earlier led to an
altercation and quarrel between the parties. It is the case of the
prosecution that the respondent-accused harbored enmity on
that account.
3.1 According to the prosecution, on 03.07.2023, between
15:45 hours and 16:10 hours, the deceased Dharmendra was
standing near his Honda Unicorn vehicle at the door of Banaras
Laundrywala. At that time, the respondent-accused suddenly
arrived on his motorcycle and, with a knife in his possession,
inflicted stab injuries on the deceased in the lower part of the left
rib and on the back. The deceased, having sustained grievous
injuries, bled profusely and succumbed to them.
3.2 The complainant lodged a complaint regarding the incident
against the respondent-accused on 03.07.2023 at Vijalpore
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Police Station, which came to be registered as Part-A C.R.
No.11822022230402 of 2023 for the offences punishable under
Section 302 of the I.P.C. and Section 135 of the G.P. Act. The
investigation was entrusted to the concerned Investigating
Officer, who, after investigation in accordance with the
provisions of Sections 154 to 172 of the Cr.P.C. filed a charge-
sheet against the respondent-accused for the aforesaid offences
th
before the learned 4 Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate,
Navsari. The same was registered on 30.09.2023 as Criminal
Case No.10381 of 2023. As the offence was exclusively triable by
th
a Court of Session, the learned 4 Additional Chief Judicial
Magistrate, Navsari, committed the case to the Court of Session
by order dated 09.10.2023, and it was registered on 13.10.2023
as Sessions Case No.101 of 2023 before the learned Sessions
Court.
3.3 In the course of the trial, after ensuring that the
respondent-accused had been furnished free of cost with copies
of the police papers, the learned Sessions Court framed the
charge against the respondent-accused at Exhibit 21 on
02.09.2025 under Section 228(1)(b) of the Cr.P.C. for the
offences punishable under Section 302 of the I.P.C. and Section
135 of the G.P. Act. The statement of the respondent-accused
was recorded at Exhibit 22, wherein he pleaded not guilty and
claimed to be tried. The prosecution evidence was thereafter
recorded in terms of Section 231(1) of the Cr.P.C.. Upon
conclusion of the trial, the learned Sessions Court, by the
impugned judgment and order, acquitted the respondent-
accused of the offences punishable under Section 302 of the
I.P.C. and Section 135 of the G.P. Act by extending the benefit of
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doubt in exercise of powers under Section 235(1) of the Cr.P.C..
3.4 Being aggrieved, the appellant has preferred the present
appeal.
4. Submissions made on behalf of the appellant are as under:
4.1 It is submitted that the learned Sessions Court has
committed a grave error of law in discarding the CCTV footage,
which is the most crucial and objective piece of evidence in the
case. PW-9, Priteshbhai Prakashbhai Sonvane (Exhibit 47), a
computer and CCTV repair technician, has categorically deposed
that he had extracted the footage from the DVR of a camera
installed near the place of occurrence into a pen drive and
handed it over to the police. The learned Sessions Court not
believed his testimony and the certificate (Exhibit 48) because of
his admission in cross-examination that he had not viewed the
contents of the footage and that the certificate was typed by the
police.
4.2 It is submitted that the role of PW-9 was purely technical,
namely, to extract the electronic record from the DVR to the pen
drive, and there is no requirement in law that such a person
must view the contents in order to certify the mechanical process
of extraction. PW-9 has owned his signature on the certificate
and has stood by the factum of extraction. The mere fact that the
police supplied the blank pen drive or typed the format of the
certificate does not vitiate the integrity of the electronic record.
4.3 The learned Sessions Court has taken a hyper-technical
view in discarding the seizure of the pen drive (Exhibit 26) solely
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on the ground that the Panch witnesses turned hostile. It is a
settled principle that the evidence of the Investigating Officer,
PW-11 Karansinh Dilipsinh Mandora, and of the technical
witness, PW-9, is sufficient to prove the seizure and extraction of
electronic evidence. The hostility of Panch witnesses does not, by
itself, render the recovery fatal to the prosecution case. Further,
the learned Sessions Court has altogether ignored the FSL report
and the certificate under Section 65B(4)(c) of the Indian Evidence
Act, 1872 (Exhibit 65) produced by the Investigating Officer,
which corroborate the integrity of the footage. By discarding the
footage at the threshold on a flawed understanding of the
certification of electronic evidence, the learned Sessions Court
has occasioned a miscarriage of justice.
4.4 The learned Sessions Court has failed to correlate the
medical evidence with the case of the prosecution. PW-6, Dr.
Hinaben Himmatbhai Patel (Exhibit 39), who conducted the
post-mortem, has opined that the death was due to hemorrhagic
shock resulting from stab wounds. The Post-Mortem Note
(Exhibit 40) and the Cause of Death Certificate (Exhibit 41)
establish a homicidal death caused by a weapon such as a knife
(chhara), which fully corroborates the narrative of the assault.
4.5 Undue reliance has been placed on the fact that the
informant, Chhotu Shivkumar Sonkar (PW-5), and the other
brother of the deceased, Rajeshbhai Shivkumar Sonkar (PW-8),
turned hostile. Where eyewitnesses or close relatives are won
over by the accused, the Court is duty-bound to scrutinize the
objective scientific and electronic evidence with greater care. The
CCTV footage is an unblinking witness to the crime, and its
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erroneous rejection has enabled the respondent-accused to
escape the course of law despite a brutal murder committed in
broad daylight.
4.6 The prosecution has established a complete chain of
circumstances, namely, the motive arising from the prior dispute
involving the sister of the respondent-accused, the medical
evidence of homicidal death and the electronic evidence
capturing the incident. The impugned judgment is founded on
surmises, conjectures and a pedantic approach to the rules of
evidence, resulting in a failure of justice. The learned Sessions
Court has also failed to apply the settled principle that the
prosecution must prove its case beyond reasonable doubt, and
that, in doing so, the Court must assess the evidence as a whole
and not allow the prosecution case to fail on technicalities.
4.7 In view of the above, it is prayed that the appeal may be
allowed and the impugned judgment and order of acquittal may
be quashed and set aside, and the respondent-accused may be
convicted for the offences with which he was charged.
5. We have learned APP for the State, at the stage of
admission, and carefully perused the oral as well as
documentary evidence adduced before the learned Sessions
Court.
6. As regards to the cause of death, the learned Sessions
Court has held the death of the deceased - Dharmendra
Shivkumar Sonkar to be unnatural and homicidal. PW-6, Dr.
Hinaben Himmatbhai Patel (Exhibit 39), who conducted the
post-mortem along with the panel doctor, opined that death was
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due to hemorrhagic shock consequent upon stab wounds. The
Post-Mortem Note (Exhibit 40) and the Cause of Death
Certificate (Exhibit 41) support this opinion, as does the inquest
Panchnama (Exhibit 38), and the medical evidence remains
unshaken in cross-examination. We concur with the finding that
the death was homicidal. The real issue is whether the
prosecution has proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that the
respondent-accused was the author of the injuries or not.
7. On this crucial question, the prosecution has no direct
evidence. The complainant, Chhotu Shivkumar Sonkar (PW-5,
Exhibit 36), has stated that he did not witness the assault and
that no one was seen inflicting knife blows on his brother. He did
not support the prosecution even when cross-examined after
being declared hostile. The deceased’s other brother, Rajeshbhai
Shivkumar Sonkar (PW-8, Exhibit 46), has stated that he was at
work at Kasba village at the relevant time and was unaware of
how his brother died. Neither witness provides any link between
the respondent-accused and the offence. The alleged motive,
arising from the earlier relationship between the accused’s sister
and the deceased, is not supported by either of them. In any
event, motive, even if proved, cannot by itself sustain a
conviction.
8. All the Panch Witnesses have turned hostile. Consequently,
the Panchnamas relating to the scene of offence, the seizure of
the motorcycle of the accused, the clothes of the deceased, the
arrest of the accused and the seizure of his clothes, and the
seizure of the pen drive (Exhibit 26), have not been proved by
independent evidence. The learned Sessions Court has therefore
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rightly held that no reliance can be placed on the FSL reports
relating to the articles so seized, as their seizure and sealing
remain unestablished.
9. The thrust of the submissions of the learned Additional
Public Prosecutor was that the learned Sessions Court wrongly
discarded the CCTV footage. We have examined this contention
with care and are unable to accept it. PW-9, Priteshbhai
Prakashbhai Sonvane (Exhibit 47), has admitted in cross-
examination that the pen drive was brought by the police, that
the certificate (Exhibit 48) was prepared by the police and merely
signed by him, that he does not know how such a certificate is to
be prepared, that neither the certificate nor his deposition
mentions the make of the DVR, and that he never viewed the
footage. We do not hold that a technician must view the contents
of the footage. However, the question is not whether he viewed it
but whether the electronic record has been established as
authentic and untempered from the stage of extraction onwards.
A certificate under Section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872
is not a mere formality. It must identify the electronic record,
describe the manner in which it was produced, and be given by a
person in a position of responsible control over the device, who
can speak to its proper functioning. A certificate drawn up by the
police and signed without knowledge of its contents, on the basis
of a deposition silent on the very device from which the footage
was taken, cannot discharge that burden. Further, the seizure of
the pen drive is not proved by independent evidence, and the
Investigating Officer (PW-11, Exhibit 50) cannot, by his sole
testimony, repair the break in the chain of custody. We do not
consider it necessary to rest our decision on the hostility of the
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Panchas alone. The absence of any credible foundation for the
footage is itself sufficient to place it outside the pale of reliable
evidence.
10. The learned Sessions Court has also found that the charge
under Section 135 of the Gujarat Police Act has not been proved.
No notification of the District Magistrate prohibiting the carrying
of arms was proved to be in force on the date, time and place of
the incident, and there is no evidence that the respondent-
accused carried or used any weapon. We find no infirmity in that
finding.
11. We would like to place on record the scope of interference
in an appeal against the acquittal and when the same is
justified. In exceptional cases, where there are compelling
circumstances and the judgment under appeal is found to be
perverse, the appellate court can interfere with the judgment of
acquittal. The Appellate Court should consider the presence of
innocence of the accused and further that, the trial Court’s
acquittal bolsters the presumption of his innocence. Interference
in a routine manner, where the other view of possible should be
avoided, unless there are reasons for interference, as the same
has been laid down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court, in the case of
Tulasareddi @ Mudakappa & Anr. v. The State of Karnataka &
Ors., 2026 INSC 67.
12. In a nutshell, the prosecution has failed to establish the
chain of circumstances pointing unerringly to the guilt of the
respondent-accused and to the exclusion of every other
hypothesis. The medical evidence proves only that the death was
homicidal, and that is not in dispute. The learned Sessions
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Court has appreciated the evidence in a reasoned manner and
held that a reasonable doubt arises as to the authorship of the
injuries. That view is plausible, based on the record, and neither
perverse nor contrary to law. No ground is made out to take a
different view.
13. In view of the foregoing, the present appeal sans merit and
deserves to be dismissed and accordingly, it is dismissed.
14. The impugned judgment and order dated 09.04.2026
passed by the learned Principal District and Sessions Judge,
Navsari in Sessions Case No.101 of 2023 stands confirmed.
15. Record and proceeding, if any, be remitted to the
concerned Court.
sd/-
(ILESH J. VORA,J)
sd/-
(R. T. VACHHANI, J)
PARMAR KRISH/11
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