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The Supreme Court recently dismissed an appeal seeking to quash and set aside a conviction order, passed by the trial court for the offence of murder on the grounds of non-recovery of the actual weapon used for killing.

The Division Bench comprising Justice M.R. Shah and Justice Dr. Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud observed,

“At the most, it can be said that the gun recovered by the police from the accused may not have been used for killing and therefore the recovery of the actual weapon used for killing can be ignored and it is to be treated as if there is no recovery at all. For convicting an accused, recovery of the weapon used in commission of offence is not a sine qua non.”

While rejecting the defence counsel’s contention to set aside conviction on the basis of findings of the ballistic report that the bullet found does not match with the firearm, the Bench stated,

“Merely because the ballistic report shows that the bullet recovered does not match with the gun recovered, it is not possible to reject the credible and reliable deposition of PW1 & PW2 (eye witnesses).”

The court further said, 

“One is required to consider the entire evidence as a whole with the other evidence on record. Mere one sentence here or there and that too to the question asked by the defence in the cross-examination cannot be considered stand alone.”

In the instant case, the accused was convicted with two others under section 302 read with Section 34 of the IPC by a trial court at District Hathras, Uttar Pradesh for having killed a person in an incident that occurred on 28/01/2006. The accused preferred an appeal before the Allahabad High Court against the judgment of the trial court but the High court rejected the appeal.

Feeling aggrieved and dissatisfied with the trial court judgment and order of the High Court, in appeal before the Supreme Court, the accused contended that the trial Court as well as the High Court committed a grave error in convicting the accused, relying upon the depositions of only eyewitnesses. It was argued by the counsel of the accused that as per the ballistic report, the bullet found did not match with the gun, making the use of the gun doubtful and accordingly, therefore, the accused should get the benefit of the doubt.

However, the Court opined that eyewitness accounts could not be ignored as the bullet injury corroborates them. Therefore, just because the ballistic report shows that the recovered bullet does not match the casing is not enough to set aside the conviction.

Case Title: Rakesh & Anr. Vs. State of U.P. & Anr.