HC acquits man sentenced to death based on sniffer dog evidence

Patna : A double bench of the Patna High Court recently set aside the death penalty awarded to a man for the murder and rape of a girl, after finding that the prosecution’s case was based only on the fact that a sniffer dog had entered the accused’s house.

The double bench of Justice Ashutosh Kumar and Justice Alok Kumar Pandey said that the dependency on specialisation of a sniffer dog cannot be right. The case was reported in 2019 when a minor girl was gang-raped and murdered in Bihar’s Araria district.

The police brought a sniffer dog which smelt the dead body and then went into the house of a person who was sleeping in a locked room. Police arrested that person on the charge of gang-rape and murder.

The trial court of Araria in October 2021 convicted him guilty of the crime and awarded him the death penalty. The man then filed a plea in the Patna High Court. During the hearing on Friday, the double bench said that the prosecution has no more evidence than a sniffer dog which went inside the house of a person.

A sniffer dog cannot be the evidence and dependency on the specialisation of a sniffer dog is not right, said the court. Unless and until, the court would not investigate the efficiency, reliability, previous performance, patterns and the capability of its handler, it would not be the solid proof. The double bench refused the argument of prosecution and immediately acquitted the accused.