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The Supreme Court bench headed by Justice RanjanGogoi, Justice Naveen Sinha, Justice KM Joseph upheld the judgement of a high court that convicted a woman for the murder of her in laws. While upholding the same, the bench said that no case of criminal consequences is free from shortcomings and the benefit of doubt would go to the accused if there is any inconsistency in the prosecution proceeding. The bench said that the prosecution evidence may suffer from discrepancy but that is a shortcoming from which no criminal case is free. The main thing to see is that whether those inconsistencies go to the root of the matter or pertain to insignificant aspects thereof.
This was a case where the trial court had acquitted the accused taking into account some inconsistencies in the prosecution case. But the high court had convicted the accused. One of the prosecution witnesses was the daughter of the accused. The court said that minor ommissions in the police statements are never considered to be fatal. The statements given by witnesses to the police are meant to be brief statements and not for the purpose of submission to the courts. The bench also referred to a witness whose throat was slit causing a loss of voice for which he was hospitalized for two months. The bench said that such witnesses carried much greater weight. There was a thirteen years old witness. She was injured and broke down during cross examination. There were few and negligible inconsistency in her statement. The court preferred to overlook the same as she had withstood a tremendous and strenuous cross examination.
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