MUMBAI: Minor inconsistencies in the testimony of eyewitnesses to a murder are an indicator of truthful evidence rather than a doubtful one, the Bombay High Court has observed while upholding the life sentence of a man convicted of stalking and murdering a woman in Palghar in 2015.
Event Context
However, at about 7:50 am on May 3, 2015, while Yadav was walking to work with three female colleagues, Vishwakarma allegedly confronted her. After an argument, he stabbed her in the stomach, chest and shoulder before fleeing the spot.
During the trial, the prosecution relied heavily on the testimony of the three women who witnessed the attack.
The judges further observed that an untutored witness was bound to make omissions or minor errors while deposing before the court. “In fact it is a sign of the truthfulness of the witness. Impeccable evidence, without any flaw or variance is possibly a prima facie sign of a tutored version of evidence,” the court said.
The bench found that the testimony of Yadav’s three colleagues was not exaggerated and noted that the women had no reason to falsely implicate Vishwakarma.
“The evidence of the eyewitnesses is reliable, sufficient and creditworthy for the conviction to be based on,” the judges held. Dismissing Vishwakarma’s appeal and upholding his conviction and life sentence, the bench said, “Some minor and inconsequential inconsistency in evidence, in our opinion, cannot be a ground to call in, find doubtful, and to impair the credit and trustworthiness of a witness or the entire prosecution story,” the court said.
Team Analysis
“One must at all times remember that, evidence of natural and genuine eye witnesses in murder trials is bound to have certain discrepancies considering the fact that they have witnessed a murder. Considering the impact of the incident on the witnesses, minor discrepancies are bound to occur and much cannot be made out of such discrepancies by the accused,” the bench observed.
Vishwakarma had challenged his conviction by arguing that the statements of the victim’s three friends, who witnessed the murder as they walked with her to work, did not match the medical evidence on record.
A sessions court in Thane had, in 2017, convicted Vishwakarma for stalking and murdering Radhika Yadav, a married woman and his former co-worker at a company in Palghar. The crime, however, took place on May 3, 2015.
Vishwakarma denied all allegations and argued that there were material contradictions between the eyewitness accounts and the medical evidence. His lawyer contended that the witnesses differed on the number of injuries suffered by Yadav, the locations of the injuries, and none of them had identified the murder weapon. The defence argued that these inconsistencies constituted a serious lacuna in the prosecution’s case.
The high court, however, said such discrepancies were only natural when witnesses were recounting a murder.
“Eyewitness, when examined at some length and in situations like the present one where they suddenly witness a murder in broad daylight, it is quite possible and natural that they make some minor error or a some discrepancy or a minor omission creeps in,” the bench said in its order passed on Tuesday.
Match Outlook
Dismissing the appeal filed by convict Ramnayan Vishwakarma, a division bench of justices A S Gadkari and R R Bhosale held that minor discrepancies in the accounts of eyewitnesses who witnessed a brutal murder in broad daylight could not undermine an otherwise reliable prosecution case.
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According to the prosecution, Yadav had left her previous workplace and joined another packaging company in Palghar. However, Vishwakarma kept stalking and harassing her after that. After she informed her husband about the harassment, he called Vishwakarma and warned him against troubling his wife. Vishwakarma had then assured him that he would mend his ways.
