A materially inconsistent sole eyewitness cannot sustain a conviction without reliable corroboration.

The appellant appealed his conviction under Sections 302/34 IPC and sentence of life imprisonment, imposed for the killing of the deceased, a former Mukhiya.

The prosecution alleged that the appellant threw a bomb at the deceased and other accused shot him at a school where voter-ID-card work was underway.

Of the witnesses said to have been present, the informant (P.W.-1), the deceased’s brother, supported the prosecution; several witnesses named in the FIR did not identify the assailants, and the deceased’s son (P.W.-12), who also claimed to be an eyewitness, was examined by police more than a day after the occurrence.

The trial court convicted the appellant under Section 302/34 IPC; charges under the Explosive Substances Act and Arms Act did not proceed for want of sanction.

Whether P.W.-12’s delayed examination and lack of contemporaneous support rendered his claim to be an eyewitness unreliable

Whether P.W.-1 was a sufficiently reliable sole eyewitness to sustain the conviction, in light of the omissions and inconsistencies in his account

Whether the evidence of witnesses declared hostile, and the absence or non-examination of other witnesses, affected the prosecution case

Whether the absence of sanction under the Explosive Substances Act affected the appellant’s conviction under Section 302/34 IPC

Section 134 of the Evidence Act provides that no particular number of witnesses is required to prove a fact; a conviction may rest on a sole witness if that witness is reliable.

Under Vadivelu Thevar v. State of Madras, oral testimony may be wholly reliable, wholly unreliable, or neither; in the third category, corroboration in material particulars is required.

Rai Sandeep v. State (NCT of Delhi) describes a “sterling witness” as one whose account is consistent, withstands scrutiny, and coheres with the supporting evidence.

Delay in recording an eyewitness’s statement may undermine reliability when surrounding circumstances raise suspicion, as explained in Ganesh Bhavan Patel v. State of Maharashtra.

A hostile witness’s evidence is not erased in its entirety and may be accepted to the extent it is reliable, as recognised in Dev Raj v. State of Chhattisgarh and the authorities discussed there.

Contradictions through prior police statements are governed by Sections 145 of the Evidence Act and 162 CrPC; Munna Pandey v. State of Bihar discusses both the required procedure and the trial court’s truth-seeking role under Section 165 of the Evidence Act.

The appellant’s conviction was under Section 302/34 IPC; the court noted that the Explosive Substances Act charges could not proceed for want of sanction, but treated that issue as distinct from whether the murder conviction was proved.

The Court excluded P.W.-12’s testimony as unreliable because his police statement was recorded more than a day after the occurrence, he was not identified as present in contemporaneous accounts or documents, and no other witness supported his claimed presence.

P.W.-1 was therefore the only remaining eyewitness, but the Court found his account did not meet the Rai Sandeep standard: he omitted at trial the four persons he had named in the FIR as accompanying him, substituted three other persons who were not examined, and changed the account from three gunshots in the FIR to two in court, consistent with the post-mortem findings.

The Court also relied on the investigating officer’s denial that P.W.-1 had given him the alleged telephone report and on the evidence of other witnesses that they did not know who had killed the deceased.

Although the Court recognised that the defence had not formally proved certain omissions as contradictions, it concluded that the cumulative evidentiary deficiencies, lack of reliable corroboration, and investigative lapses left the prosecution case insufficient to sustain the conviction.

The sanction issue did not determine the Section 302/34 charge.

Finding the evidence insufficient to prove the charge, it allowed the appeal, set aside the conviction and sentence under Section 302/34 IPC, acquitted the appellant, and discharged him from his bail-bond liabilities.