Patna: The Patna High Court has released a person, who was sentenced to death for allegedly raping and killing a 16-year-old girl under the Barhara Police Station in the Bhojpur District.
The court also released two other people, who was awarded a life sentence in the same case.
The last hearing of their appeal occurred on Friday and detailed assessments were uploaded on Saturday night.
The Division of Judge Ashwani Kumar Singh and Arvind Srivastava observed that the police did not bother to visit the crime and proposed that the girl’s body had been restored in the statement of the death penalty of Balwant Singh, even though the body recovered far earlier even before she was arrested.
The Public Prosecutor (High Court) Abhimanyu Sharma said the bench ruled out the Pocso court order gave the death penalty to Balwant on September 6, 2019.
“This also set aside a lifelong visional order to two inmates, Chotu Singh and Anand Pandey,” he said.
The bench observed that the prosecution failed to prove the case beyond doubts that made sense against the applicants.
The girl’s father has applyed for the Barrohara Police Station against Balwant, Chotu and other unknown people (Anand non-FIR accused) on February 5, 2018, alleged that his daughter was raped and killed by the defendant.
The police submitted the first Chargesheet in Balwant on May 3, 2018 and the additional Chargesheet on the other two on September 20, 2018.
The High Court ordered a direct release of balwant from prison, if he was not involved in other cases.
The bench also found a contradiction in the statement of the victim’s father, an investigative officer of the case and witnesses.
It observed that kidnapping took place on January 31 and the body was restored on February 5 after that FIR was submitted.
But there is no reasonable explanation of delays.
The court found that the court court acknowledged the statement of Balwant’s confession as evidence even though it was recorded by the police after taking him to detention on February 18, 2018 while the body had recovered 13 days earlier.
Balwant said he, along with Anand, Om Rai, Ajai Rai and Chotu, raised the girl in the wedding room and raped him before strangling him to death.
He said they threw his body into the Mustard field.
The bench observed that the statement of recognition to the police in detention could not be proven against the defendant until it was recorded before the judge according to the actions of Indian evidence.
The bench also found many other gaps in the case of prosecution.
The bench also observed that postmortem reports from the vaginal swab taken from the body were not in the note and nothing was in the postmortem report that the girl was raped.
“In the absence of each testimony of vulnerable medical rape and evidence, no stretch of imagination can be said that prosecution has been able to prove the allegations below the 376D IPC section outside the shadow of a reasonable doubt,” the court observed.
Senior advocate Kanhaiya Prasad Singh, Ashok Kumar Singh, Arun Kumar Pandey and Rajesh Kumar represented the applicant while Amis Kumar was Amicus Curiae and App Satya Narayan Prasad with Sharma representing the country.