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Supreme Court of India 2023-08-18 allowed

HARENDRA RAI vs THE STATE OF BIHAR & ORS

Bench: 3 — Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Abhay S. Oka, Vikram Nath

In Brief

In this landmark case, the Supreme Court convicted Prabhunath Singh, a sitting Member of Parliament, of murder and attempted murder based on a firing incident in 1995 that killed two persons. Although the Trial Court and High Court had acquitted him, the Supreme Court found that the trial had been grossly subverted through intimidation of witnesses, abduction of the deceased's mother, corruption of prosecutors and judges, and systematic suppression of evidence. The Court took judicial notice of a Habeas Corpus judgment documenting the interference and relied on the dying declaration of one of the deceased victims recorded immediately after the incident, corroborated by eye-witness testimony from the mother of the deceased. The decision emphasizes that in cases of systemic corruption of the justice system, courts must take extraordinary steps to uncover the truth and ensure justice prevails.

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Criminal Law Evidence Dying Declaration Judicial Notice Witness Intimidation Prosecutorial Misconduct Abuse of Process Eye-Witness Testimony

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