High courts overturn man’s conviction after loss of criminal record

New Delhi:

The Delhi High Court has overturned the conviction and six-year prison sentence awarded to a man in 2003, noting that the court’s file has been lost and that material documents, including witness statements, are now unavailable to insight.

The Supreme Court, while hearing the convict’s appeal against the judgments of the sentencing and sentencing court, said that access to the procedural law record is an essential part of hearing an appeal and that each appellant has a valuable right to appeal to the higher court. profession to meet. court that the recorded material did not justify his conviction.

Underlining that every defendant carries the presumption of innocence even at the appeal stage, the court allowed the appeal and overturned the court’s order to send the person to six years in prison for “culpable homicide not amounting to murder’.

“I believe that in order to confirm the conviction of the appellant, the inspection of the trial court record is the essential element in the hearing of the appeal. Each appellant has the right to satisfy the Court of Appeal that the material evidence available The file did not justify his conviction and this is a valuable right that cannot be denied to an applicant,” Judge Jasmeet Singh said in a recent order.

“According to established principles of criminal jurisprudence, every accused carries with him the presumption of innocence, even at the stage of appeal. The appeal is allowed and the verdict of 20.10.2003 and the verdict of 23.10.2003 are hereby hereby quashed,” the court orders.

The court noted that in the present case, the unavailable documents included witness testimony, police investigation report, seizure memos, arrest memos, post-mortem report, etc., and therefore a new trial was also not in the interests of justice.

“The order of 12.11.2009 states categorically that the procedural law record has been lost. I believe that in the present case every effort has been made to reconstruct the procedural law record. Despite all efforts of this court, the registry, the learned counsel of the parties, the procedural law record has not been reconstructed because it has been lost,” the court said.

It also noted that in the present case, the witnesses had already turned hostile and the contested judgment of the court was based on preponderance of probabilities.

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