Circumstances sometimes speak as
forcefully as does direct evidence
What is
Circumstantial Evidence:-
‘Circumstantial Evidence’ includes all the relevant facts. It
is not secondary evidence; it is merely direct evidence applied indirectly.
How it help to the Court to reach on fair
Decision :-
It allows the court to make
some assumptions or some inferences that bring it very close to being able to
define other facts which are directly related to the chain of the course of
action.
Supreme
Court About Circumstantial Evidence :-
The Hon'ble Apex Court, has time
and again established by way of judicial pronouncement that in cases of
circumstantial evidence the entire chain of evidence has to be proved beyond
reasonable doubt and if any of the evidence collected against the accused is
not proved beyond reasonable doubt the entire chain of evidence goes and it is
highly unsafe to rely upon such evidence. The law laid down on circumstantial
evidence is very clear.
Standard of Proof Required :-
The standard of proof required to convict a
person on circumstantial evidence has now well settled by the Apex Court in a
series of decisions. In this context, I may quote the following judgments:
(i) Sharad Birdhichand Sarda Vs State of
Maharashtra (1984) 4 SCC 116
(ii) Balwinder Singh Vs State of Punjab
(1987) 1 SCC 1: 1987 SCC (Cri) 27: AIR 1987 SC 350
(iii) Dhananjoy Chatterjee Vs State of W.B.
(1994) 2 SCC 220: 1994 SCC (Cri) 358
(iv) Laxman Naik Vs State of Orissa (1994) 3
SCC 381: 1994 SCC (Cri) 656
(v) Brijlala Pd. Sinha Vs State of Bihar
(1998) 5 SCC 699: 1998 SCC (Cri) 1382 The Hon'ble Supreme Court in 'Sharad
Birdhichand Sarda v State of Maharashtra, 1984 Supreme Court Cases (Cri) 487',
which is a leading authority on circumstantial evidence, provided the
conditions which must be fulfilled in order to arrive to the conclusion and the
said conditions are mentioned as under:
(i) the circumstances from which the conclusion of guilt is to be drawn should be fully established.
It may be noted here that this Court indicated that the
circumstances concerned 'must or should' and not 'may be' established. There is
not only a grammatical but a legal distinction between 'may be proved' and
"must be or should be proved".
Certainly, it is a primary principle that the accused must be and
not merely may be guilty before a court can convict and the mental distance
between 'may be' and 'must be' is long and divides vague conjectures from sure
conclusions.
(ii)
the facts so established should be consistent only with the hypothesis of the
guilt of the accused, that is to say, they should not be explainable on any
other hypothesis except that the accused is guilty.
(iii)
the circumstances should be of a conclusive nature and tendency.
(iv)
they should exclude every possible hypothesis except the one to be proved, and
(v)
there must be a chain of evidence so complete as not to leave any reasonable
ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and must
show that in all human probability the act must have been done by the accused.
Conclusion :-
Hence it can be said that - The circumstances from
which the conclusion of the guilt is to be drawn have not only to be fully
established but also that all the circumstances so established should be of a
conclusive nature and consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the
accused and should not be capable of being explained by any other hypothesis,
except the guilt of the accused and that all the circumstances cumulatively
taken together should lead to the only irresistible conclusion that the accused
alone is the perpetrator of the crime.
The law laid down by the Hon'ble
Supreme Court in 'Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v State of Maharashtra, 1984
Supreme Court Cases (Cri) 487' is still the law of land as of late the Hon'ble
Supreme Court in the case of State Vs Rakesh 2013 [4] JCC 2464 retreated
'it is a settled law that criminal jurisprudence begins with the presumption
that unless otherwise proved the person facing the trial would be deemed to be
innocent. The burden to prove the charge against the accused is on the
prosecution.
The prosecution, if fails
to connect the act of the accused with the ultimate crime and where the
material links constituting the evidence are found missing then the benefit of
the same goes in favour of the accused. Also, in a case based on circumstantial
evidence, the settled legal position is that the circumstances from which the
conclusion of guilt is drawn should be fully proved and there should be no gap
left in the chain of evidence. Further, it was also the proved circumstances
must be consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused and
totally inconsistent with his innocence.
