Published on: 14 August 2023 at 17:22 IST
Court: Supreme Court
Citation: Shivaji Sahabrao Bobade V. State of Maharashtra (1973)
Honourable Supreme Court of India has held that there is a huge difference in ‘may be’ and ‘must be’ in criminal jurisprudence. It is held that prosecution must do the following tasks to prove their case.
- The facts so established should be consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused, that is to say, they should not be explainable on any other hypothesis except that the accused is guilty,
- The circumstances should be of a conclusive nature and tendency,
- They should exclude every possible hypothesis except the one to be proved, and
- There must be a chain of evidence so complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and must show that in all human probability the act must have been done by the accused.
19. Now let us sum up the whole case in the light of the evidence we have found to be of worth. We must observe that even if a witness is not reliable, he need not be false and even if the police have trumped up one witness or two or has embroidered the story to give a credible look to their case that cannot defeat justice if there is clear and unimpeachable evidence making out the guilt of the accused.
Certainly, it is a primary principle that the accused must be and not merely may be guilty before a court can convict and the mental distance between “may be” and “must be” is long and divides vague conjectures from sure conclusions. Informing ourselves of these important principles we analyse the evidence found good by us. In our view there is only one eyewitness, PW 5, Vilas. Even if the case against the accused hangs on the evidence of a single eyewitness it may be enough to sustain the conviction given sterling testimony of a competent, honest man, although as a rule of prudence courts call for corroboration.
It is a platitude to say that witnesses have to be weighed and not counted since quality matters more than quantity in human affair. We are persuaded that PW 5 is a witness for truth but in view of the circumstances that he is interested we would still want corroboration in this case to reassure ourselves. And that we have in this case.
Drafted By Abhijit Mishra
