In Brief
A woman was convicted of murdering her two young children by drowning them in a pond and attempting suicide. Her conviction was based solely on the testimony of a shopkeeper who claimed to have witnessed events leading to the discovery of the drowned children. The Supreme Court acquitted her, finding that the shopkeeper's court testimony was entirely contradicted by his prior police statement and constituted a major 'improvement' of his account. With no examination of the alleged eyewitness (a Rickshaw Puller) and a wholly unreliable single witness, the Court held the conviction was based on conjecture and speculation, not the complete chain of circumstances required for conviction on circumstantial evidence. The appellant was released forthwith.
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