In Brief
A man named Naseem Khan was killed in 1996 in Madhya Pradesh. The trial court convicted three men (Ramjan Khan, Musaf Khan, and Habib Khan) of murder based largely on eyewitness testimony from the victim's brothers and mother. The High Court reversed the conviction and acquitted them after finding the witness statements unreliable—the brothers did not mention the accused's names or weapons in their police statements but gave these details for the first time in court. The Supreme Court upheld the acquittal, holding that material omissions and contradictions rendered the ocular evidence insufficient to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and the accused deserved the benefit of doubt.
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