After 7 years in jail, Kolkata man convicted of bro’s murder freed
Times of India | 2 November 2024
KOLKATA: A murder convict who spent seven years in jail was last month acquitted by Calcutta high court, which after going through evidence, found serious lacunae in establishing beyond doubt that he had committed the crime.
The incident dates back to April 23, 2015, when Kolkata resident Ranadip Banerjee, alias Rinku, was accused of murdering his elder brother, who suffered from a neurological disorder. A cousin of the two brothers, Joydeep Banerjee, had registered a case with Gariahat police station. In 2017, Ranadip was convicted of murder by a trial court under Section 302 of Indian Penal Code.
Ranadip challenged his conviction before a division bench of Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Uday Kumar citing discrepancies and inconsistencies in evidence. “The chain of circumstances has been fabricated by police as per their whims and fancy in the absence of any direct evidence to the commission of the offence whatsoever,” his counsel submitted.
The state’s counsel contended that it had been established that the relationship between the brothers was bitter and the accused used to assault the victim. On the fateful day, he caused injury to the victim and prevented him from receiving proper treatment, leading to his death.
However, after going through the details of the case, the HC bench observed that while courts can ignore trivial inconsistencies, material contradictions are fatal and demolish a case that is based on circumstantial evidence due to the failure to establish the links. The bench expressed surprise at the investigating officer not recording statements of immediate neighbours and tenants on the premises in which the crime was committed.
The HC division bench pointed out that while the prosecution had claimed that a blood-stained rod recovered from the room was the murder weapon, no forensic examination was conducted to ascertain if the blood on it matched that of the victim or whether the accused’s fingerprints were present on it.
There was no evidence that the weapon was used to commit the crime, the judges said, adding that although blood samples were collected and fingerprints of the accused taken, these were not forensically examined or matched.
“The benefit of Section 106 of the Evidence Act can only be bestowed upon the prosecution in a case where it has successfully proved its case beyond reasonable doubt and offers an additional link to the chain of circumstances aimed to be established. This provision cannot come to the aid of the prosecution in the present case where it has failed to form and link the chain of circumstances, even in the slightest,” the bench said.