In Brief
Following a violent conflict between political parties in a village in West Bengal in 1993, 82 persons were charged with murder, unlawful assembly, arson, and rioting. The trial court acquitted all accused, and the High Court upheld this. The Supreme Court held that the High Court failed to apply proper judicial scrutiny—it overlooked material evidence on charges like arson and unlawful assembly and wrongly discarded consistent eyewitness testimony merely because some details were first mentioned in court. The Court emphasised that minor variations in witness accounts do not render evidence untrustworthy, and that the doctrine "false in one thing, false in everything" does not apply in India. The judgment was set aside and remitted for fresh consideration on merits.
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