In Brief
On 23 January 2014, six members of a family were murdered in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh. Three men—Momin Khan, Jaikam Khan, and Sajid—were convicted of murder and sentenced to death based primarily on testimony from two closely related eyewitnesses. The Supreme Court set aside their convictions, holding that the eyewitnesses' evidence—falling between wholly reliable and wholly unreliable—required independent corroboration that the prosecution failed to provide. Key weaknesses included: inconsistencies between witness accounts and site plans, lacks of physical evidence credibility, no proven motive for two accused, and suspicious arrest details. The Court emphasised that capital convictions demand rigorous scrutiny and cannot rest on conjecture.
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