In Brief
In a case involving murder and dacoity of a family, the Supreme Court examined convictions based largely on evidence from a five-year-old child witness and fingerprint matching. The Court found that while a child witness's evidence need not be rejected outright, the account here contained material inconsistencies: the witness was absent from the original FIR despite allegedly seeing everything, and his narration contradicted the reported suspects. For the other two accused, fingerprint evidence alone—without proof of presence or substantive corroborating evidence—was insufficient for conviction. The Court acquitted all three appellants, finding the evidence lacked a secure procedural foundation and contained unexplained gaps.
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