In Brief
A nine-year-old boy, Arjun, went missing on 4 February 2001 in Gujarat. The appellants were convicted by the High Court for kidnapping, murder, and related offences based largely on an alleged extra-judicial confession and the 'last seen together' theory. The Supreme Court allowed the appeals and acquitted the appellants, finding that the prosecution's case rested on circumstantial evidence with multiple fatal flaws: the key witnesses gave contradictory accounts, there was a nine-day gap between the alleged last sighting and post-mortem examination, the identity of the decomposed body was never established by the victim's father, medical evidence contradicted the prosecution, and the extra-judicial confession lacked credible corroboration. The Court held that circumstantial evidence must form a complete chain pointing only to guilt, and here it did not.
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