Kriti Agrawal –
The Patna High Court recently overturned a Trial Court’s decision to sentence an accused in a dowry death case to death penalty.
According to a Division Bench of Justice Ashwani Kumar Singh and Justice Arvind Srivastava, the evidence on record did not indicate any proof that the deceased was ever subjected to maltreatment on the basis of dowry.
The High Court stated, “The case at hand is a textbook example of how not to write a decision. The Supreme Court has often emphasized that Courts and Judges must undertake a dispassionate assessment of evidence and that they should not be affected by the horror of crime or the character of the person.”
The Court went on to say that the Judge should not be swayed by his own imagined norms of societal functioning when performing judicial duties.
According to the Bench, there was no direct evidence against the accused-appellant in this case for the murder of the dead, and the conviction was based solely on circumstantial evidence that did not indicate to the commission of the claimed crime.
The accused was charged with murdering his wife due to non-payment of dowry demands.
The spouse and other appellants were found guilty of cruelty, causing dowry death, murder, and causing evidence disappearance by the Sessions Judge at Gopalganj.
Division Bench stated, “A Judge’s reasoning is the mental process that leads to his decision. All judgments should be backed up by well-documented reasons. The factual determination should be based on legal testimony and legal grounds. Wild suspicion, hypothetical presumption, guesses, and conjectures should not be used to make a factual determination or a conclusion.”
The Judge further stated that when drafting a decision, the Court should be objective in evaluating the facts.