In Brief
Two men were found dead on a road in Tamil Nadu in December 1990, allegedly killed by a lorry and iron rods wielded by eight conspirators. The trial court convicted all eight under criminal conspiracy and three for murder. The High Court reversed the convictions, finding the prosecution case rife with infirmities: the conspiracy evidence rested on inadmissible hearsay from hostile witnesses; the alleged murder weapon recovered from an accessible pond had no forensic examination; post-mortem evidence was inconclusive; and no eyewitness placed the accused at the scene. The Supreme Court upheld the acquittal, holding that circumstantial evidence must form a complete, unbroken chain excluding all hypotheses but guilt. The prosecution failed to establish motive, definitively link the lorry to the incident, or prove the deaths were not accidental.
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