'Unless court's view impossible or perverse': Supreme Court upholds acquittal of murder accused

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has said the scope of interference in an appeal against acquittal is very limited, unless the view taken by court is impossible or perverse, as it upheld the acquittal of a man accused of killing his wife and burning her body.

A bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and P.S. Narasimha said: "The scope of interference in an appeal against acquittal is very limited. Unless it is found that the view taken by the court is impossible or perverse, it is not permissible to interfere with the finding of acquittal."

"Equally if two views are possible, it is not permissible to set aside an order of acquittal, merely because the appellate court finds the way of conviction to be more probable. The interference would be warranted only if the view taken is not possible at all," it added.

The top court dismissed the appeal filed by the Rajasthan government challenging the September 2009 judgement of the high court, where the court acquitted the accused while reversing his conviction in the case by trial court.

State government counsel had argued that the accused's extra-judicial confession before one of the witnesses in the case would inspire confidence and pressed for setting aside the high court judgment in the matter.

However, the apex court, stressing that it is not inclined to interfere with the high court judgment, said: "The high court, relying on the judgment of this court in the case of State of Punjab v. Bhajan Singh and others, so also in the case of Gopal Sah v State of Bihar has held that extra-judicial confession was a weak piece of evidence and unless there was some corroboration, the conviction solely on the basis of extra-judicial confession could not be sustained. The view taken by the high court cannot be said to be either impossible or perverse meriting our interference."

It was alleged that the Jodhpur-based accused had killed his wife and to destroy evidence, he had set her body on fire. In 1986, the accused was by convicted by the trial court for murder and sentenced him to him to suffer life imprisonment. The accused was acquitted by the high court in September 2009.