In a unique murder case where victim’s body was carried by a gang of five accused with them after spraying bullets into him and never recovered but they later had taken the defence that no killing had taken place as a person of the same name “surfaced” in Rajasthan, the Supreme Court has applied the Irish principle of “corpus delicti” of decide the case.
A bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and A.K. Patnaik said when the body of murder victim was not recovered, or has been destroyed and no postmortem had been done, the principle of “corpus delicti” was the best way to decide the crime by the trial courts.
Under the principle, the proof of the fact of the murder and that the person accused had committed the crime, has to be established either by “confession” or on the basis of the circumstantial evidence even if the dead body is not recovered.
Explaining further, the apex court said under the principle, the prosecution first it has to prove that the death of a person has been caused due manslaughter.
In such a situation “the fact of death of the deceased must be established like any other fact. Corpus delicti (recovery of body) in some cases may not be possible,” the apex court said adding for establishing the crime, circumstantial evidence was the key in the hands of the prosecution.
The top court cited instances where the dead body being thrown in a river, burnt and destroyed by any other means. “What, therefore is required to base a conviction for an offence of murder is that there should be reliable acceptable evidence that the offence of murder, like any other factum of death was committed, which could only be proved by circumstantial evidence.”
The guidelines came in a case where five persons had pumped bullet into Ami Lal in Haryana in 1990 and took out his body with them. But they took defence in the court that Ami Lal was alive and was even arrested in a case in Rajasthan and produced before a magistrate, but the Haryana police failed to bring him back despite their repeated demand.
But the Haryana police had claimed that Ami Lal had been killed in the attack by the five accused as his brother and another associate were also injured seriously with him.