Chhawla case: Supreme Court acquits 3 men facing death for 2012 gang rape

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Uday Umesh Lalit said, “Having regard to the totality of circumstances and the evidence on record, it is difficult to hold that the prosecution had proved the guilt of the accused by adducing cogent and clinching evidence.”

The Supreme Court on Monday acquitted three men sentenced to death for the 2012 gang rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman, citing glaring lapses in the investigation and trial of the case, leading to serious doubts in the minds of the top court judges.

Three alleged accused – Rahul, Ravi and Vinod – were convicted and the awarded the death sentence by a city court on February 19, 2014.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Uday Umesh Lalit said, “Having regard to the totality of circumstances and the evidence on record, it is difficult to hold that the prosecution had proved the guilt of the accused by adducing cogent and clinching evidence.”

On February 9, 2012, the woman, who worked with a private company in Gurugram’s Cyber City, had de-boarded a bus at Qutub Vihar, a mere 10-walk away from her house at Chhawla Camp, and was walking home with two friends, when she was waylaid and abducted by the occupants of a red Tata Indica car.

Days later, the woman’s body was found in a field at Rodhai village in Haryana’s Rewari district, with multiple injuries and burn marks. An autopsy revealed she was attacked with car tools, glass bottles and sharp metal objects.

Three alleged accused – Rahul, Ravi and Vinod – were convicted and the awarded the death sentence by a city court on February 19, 2014. The judgement of the trial court was upheld by the Delhi high court on August 26 the same year, noting the brutal manner in which the body was mutilated before and after the woman was kidnapped and raped, referring to the accused as “trained blood hounds picking out a scent”.

Sentencing them to death, the high court judges had observed, “It would be a crime against the society to allow those who are so inveterately depraved the freedom to wander, in fact their fellows, prey upon society, and to multiply their kind.”

Setting aside their conviction, the Supreme Court bench, also comprising justices S Ravindra Bhat and Bela M Tripathi, laid bare the faults in the investigation of the case by the Delhi Police and the subsequent trial conducted at the special fast track court at Dwarka, saying, “It may be true that if the accused involved in the heinous crime go unpunished or are acquitted, a kind of agony and frustration may be caused to the society in general and to the family of the victim in particular. However, the law does not permit the Courts to punish the accused on the basis of moral conviction or on suspicion alone.”

As a measure of some relief, the Court directed the Delhi State Legal Services Authority to consider providing enhanced compensation to the family members of the victim under Section 357(A) of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

The three accused were poor and their appeal before the Supreme Court was taken up by the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee, which assigned the case to senior advocate A Sirajudeen. The apex court also appointed senior advocate Sonia Mathur to assist in the matter as amicus curiae (friend of the court), while the prosecution was represented by additional solicitor general (ASG) Aishwarya Bhati.

Both Sirajudeen and Mathur pored through the evidence and discovered that the post mortem report did not indicate the time of death and the body, despite remaining in the open for four days as per the version of the prosecution, showed no signs of putrefaction. This fact was found to be highly unlikely by the top court to doubt the prosecution story. They further pointed out that the call detail record (CDR) data of the accused and the deceased at relevant times were found to be at different locations.

Even samples related to the accused and victim were sent for forensic examination 13 days after the incident, which made the apex court suggest, “During this period, they remained in the Malkhana of the police station. Under the circumstances, the possibility of tampering with the samples collected also could not be ruled out.”

Even at the stage of trial, the top court found that the trial judge acted as a “passive umpire” who failed to take note of the “glaring lapse” that out of the 49 witnesses examined by the prosecution, 10 material witnesses were not cross-examined. Further, many other important witnesses were not adequately cross-examined, the bench held.

All this made the court conclude, “We find that the Appellants-accused were deprived of their rights to have a fair trial, apart from the fact that the truth also could not be elicited by the trial court.”

Being a death sentence case, justice Trivedi, writing the judgment for the bench, said, “Every case has to be decided by the Courts strictly on merits and in accordance with law without being influenced by any kind of outside moral pressures or otherwise.” She even doubted the reports regarding DNA profiling as the hair strands of the deceased were found from the car tools.

“The prosecution has to bring home the charges levelled against them beyond reasonable doubt, which the prosecution has failed to do in the instant case,” the judges said. “Court is constrained to make these observations as the Court has noticed many glaring lapses having occurred during the course of the trial...resultantly, the Court is left with no alternative but to acquit the accused, though involved in a very heinous crime.”