The Supreme Court on Friday acquitted a man condemned to death for the multiple murders of his wife and five minor daughters, concluding that the prosecution did not prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
In a majority judgment, a three-judge Bench led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi overturned the lower court’s decisions and directed Chhattisgarh native Dhal Singh Dewangan to be “set at liberty immediately”. The case was argued by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves with the Centre on the Death Penalty at National Law University, Delhi, playing a central role in developing legal strategy and arguments on conviction and sentencing in the case.
While Justices Gogoi and U.U. Lalit upheld Dhal Singh's innocence, Justice P.S. Pant, in his dissenting judgment, commuted the death penalty to life imprisonment. The majority bench held that circumstantial evidence, based on which the trial court had convicted the man, “did not form a complete chain of evidence.”
Justice Pant, in his minority view, said lower courts “appear to have been influenced by the brutality and the manner in which the crime is committed.”
Justice Pant pointed out that the convict had no criminal antecedents. “It cannot be said that he is a continuing threat to society or that he cannot be reformed or rehabilitated,” he said. Justice Pant observed that Dhal Singh belonged to a “socially and economically disadvantaged strata of society” and considering the facts, it found that life imprisonment would meet the ends of justice.
Dhal Singh was convicted for the murder of his wife and daughters in February 2012 by the Sessions Court, Durg, Chhattisgarh. The Sessions Court sentenced him to death on the same day. In August 2013, the High Court had upheld his conviction and confirmed the death sentence. Dhal Singh had spent more than four years and six months in prison and more than three years on death row.
