In Brief
Two shooting incidents in Hamirpur, U.P. in 1997 killed five people, including brothers Rakesh and Rajesh Kumar Shukla and a minor. The trial court acquitted all seven accused, finding the prosecution case unreliable due to perceived inconsistencies. The High Court reversed the acquittal, convicting the accused for murder under Sections 302 and 307 read with 149 IPC and sentencing them to life imprisonment. The accused appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing the eyewitness evidence (PW-1 and PW-2) was unreliable due to various contradictions. The Supreme Court dismissed the appeals, holding the High Court was justified in reversing the acquittal as the trial court had adopted a hyper-technical approach, misread evidence, and rejected credible injured eyewitness testimony based on speculative reasoning rather than actual evidence. The Court emphasized that minor discrepancies in eyewitness accounts do not vitiate cases with corroborating medical and forensic evidence."
The lawyer headnote and full judgment text are available to registered users.