In Brief
Ranjeet Singh was convicted under Section 302 IPC for murdering Devnath on 15 January 2010 and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Supreme Court set aside the conviction, finding the eyewitness testimony of three minors (the victim's granddaughter and two sisters) unreliable. Key factors included: the witnesses remained silent for nine days before making accusations; the FIR did not name them as witnesses; closely related senior family members also initially said nothing; and the grandmother contradicted their account by testifying she would not let them go to the forest. Minor quarrels between appellant and victim months earlier and ambiguous evidence of abscondence were insufficient to prove murder. The appellant was acquitted and released.
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