Man acquitted of sexually assaulting 9-year-old, but murder conviction upheld; death sentence commuted to life imprisonment

The nine-year-old daughter of PW1 and PW2 went missing on 2 March 2024. Her body was found in a canal on 5 March, and post-mortem evidence established homicidal death involving asphyxia and genital injuries; semen was detected in a vaginal swab.

The prosecution case against the accused, based on circumstantial evidence, included last-seen evidence, his presence at the co-accused’s house, his conduct after the occurrence, discovery evidence, and DNA evidence.

The trial court convicted him of offences including murder under Section 302 IPC and penetrative sexual assault under Section 6 of the POCSO Act, and imposed death sentences for murder and the POCSO offence.

The High Court considered the referred death sentence and the accused’s appeal; it also received further evidence from a constable and recalled witnesses for examination.

Whether the circumstantial evidence proved the accused’s guilt of penetrative sexual assault under Section 6 of the POCSO Act beyond reasonable doubt

Whether the circumstances proved the accused’s guilt of murder and screening of the offence under Sections 302 and 201 IPC

Whether the death sentence was justified, or should be modified in light of the circumstances and mitigating material

Under Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, only the portion of a confession that distinctly relates to a fact discovered is admissible; a fact already known to police is not thereby discovered.

In a case resting on circumstantial evidence, the circumstances must be fully established and form a chain pointing unerringly to the accused’s guilt; last-seen evidence, without sufficient supporting evidence, does not itself establish every charged offence.

An expert opinion must be assessed against its stated methodology and evidential foundation; here, the DNA analyst’s asserted “close match” was undermined by the failure to meet the laboratory threshold and the absence of a corresponding allele chart in the original report.

The death penalty is reserved for the “rarest of rare” cases, and residual doubt and other individual mitigating circumstances may weigh against it [para. 35(i)–(vii), discussing Ashok Debbarma v. State of Tripura, (2014) 4 SCC 747].

The Court accepted the evidence that the accused was last seen with the victim, was seen leaving the co-accused’s house, knew the place of occurrence, and displayed suspicious post-occurrence conduct.

It treated these circumstances as supporting guilt for murder and screening of the offence, but found them insufficient to establish that the accused himself committed penetrative sexual assault.

The DNA evidence did not reliably connect him to that assault: the analyst’s “close match” opinion concerned trace DNA, failed the threshold, and was not supported by a chart in the original report; the Court also found no other acceptable evidence proving the accused’s sexual assault of the victim.

For sentencing, the Court considered the case’s circumstantial nature, uncertainty about the accused’s precise role in the killing, the probation report, his age, and his satisfactory prison conduct; it concluded that life imprisonment was proportionate.

It modified the death sentence for murder to imprisonment for life and confirmed the sentences for the other offences.

The death reference was answered accordingly, and the criminal appeal was partly allowed.