Fourteen years after a man was sent to life imprisonment for abduction and murder of a businessman, the Delhi High Court last week acquitted him, saying the “prosecution has not been able to prove each of the links in the chain of circumstances”.
A Bench of Justice S. Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel said in the present case, there was no charge framed against the accused, Deepak Sarna, for the substantive offences of abduction or murder.
“Consequently, the trial court could not have proceeded to convict him for those offences,” the Bench said. The case relates to the abduction and murder of a Delhi-based businessman in October 2000. His body was recovered from a well in a village, Simbhavali.
The victim had left for his office in his car on October 28, 2000 to collect a payment of around ₹80,000-90,000, which he had loaned to Mr. Sarna, the police said. The victim, who would normally reach home by 9.30 p.m., did not turn up that night. On February 9, 2004, the trial court had convicted Mr. Sarna for the crime but let off the two other co-accused.
Mr. Sarna challenged the trial court decision before the High Court which began hearing the case on May 7, 2004. It took the High Court over 14 years to come to the conclusion that Mr. Sarna was wrongly implicated in the case.
The Bench, which gave its verdict last week, said the reason given by the prosecution to explain the motive for the crime was unsatisfactory.
One of the motives that the prosecution gave was that the victim was in a relationship with Mr. Sarna’s sister and he was unhappy with this. “There is no iota of evidence to prove this motive,” the Bench said. The second reason was that the businessman had given Mr. Sarna a loan, which he wanted to recover. The Bench said this was not disclosed at the first available opportunity either by the father of the deceased or a cousin of the father, who had lodged a missing report. “The chain of circumstances… and importantly, the motive for the commission of the crime have not been conclusively proved by the prosecution,” the Bench said.
