In Brief
Eight persons were convicted by a trial court for conspiring to murder two men (D1 and D2) by hitting them with a lorry and beating them with iron rods on 28 December 1990. The High Court reversed the convictions and acquitted all accused, finding serious gaps in the prosecution's circumstantial evidence. The Supreme Court upheld the acquittals. It held the prosecution failed to prove conspiracy beyond reasonable doubt—key evidence was inadmissible police hearsay, and alleged witnesses denied the conspiracy when examined in court. The post-mortem opinions were inconclusive, the connection between the lorry and the incident speculative, motive inadequately established, and the single recovered iron rod was of no evidentiary value. The court emphasised that for conviction on circumstantial evidence, the chain must be complete and conclusive, excluding all other hypotheses; suspicion alone is insufficient.
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