‘Circumstantial evidence does not prove guilt’: HC acquits man convicted for wife’s murder

Tongare was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his wife by the sessions court in 2017. His defence was of total denial of the charges

Mumbai: Nashik resident Sampat Tongare, who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 for murdering his wife, was recently acquitted by the Bombay High Court. The circumstantial evidence placed on record by the prosecution was not enough to prove Tongare’s guilt and he “deserves to be acquitted”, a bench of justices Sarang Kotwal and Advait Sethna said.

‘Circumstantial evidence does not prove guilt’: HC acquits man convicted for wife’s murder

“....these circumstances cannot form a complete chain of circumstances pointing unerringly only to the hypothesis of the guilt of the appellant (Tongare),” the bench held on August 22, ordering Tongare’s release from prison after eight years behind bars.

Tongare was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his wife by the sessions court in 2017. His defence was of total denial of the charges.

He lived with his wife Lata in Kochargaon, a village in Nashik’s Dindori taluka known for grape farming. On January 15, 2015, Lata’s father Shivram Shinde filed a complaint at the Dindori police station after his daughter was found dead in a field, not too far from the house where she and her husband had been living since their marriage in 2014.

Lata had returned to her father’s house about a month before she was found dead, after Tongare allegedly beat her with a log of wood, the sessions court was told. Twenty days later, her father and uncle met Tongare’s father and brother and brokered a truce – they agreed to send Lata back to him after he assured that he would not repeat his actions.

However, a fortnight later Lata died due to “hemorrhagic shock due to facial injury coupled with cerebral injury”. Shinde alleged that Tongare had earlier hit her “mercilessly” as he suspected her character. The police also found a log of wood in the bushes where her corpse was found, and the blood on the log matched her blood group.

In the high court, Tongare’s lawyer Swapana Kode argued that the police’s case against her client was based entirely on circumstantial evidence.

“The prosecution has failed to prove each of the circumstances separately beyond a reasonable doubt,” Kode told the court. Tongare’s motive to kill his wife was not proved by the prosecution, she said. Besides, while Lata’s father had claimed that she was taken to a private hospital after Tongare assaulted her, records showed that she had visited the hospital in Dindori as she was suffering from fever and had returned to her husband’s house after that.

These circumstances indicated that the very premise of Lata’s alleged ill treatment was not solid, Kode argued. Lata’s family had lodged the FIR against Tongare “out of anger”, she said, and added that no witness from the meeting of the two families had been examined.

The recovery of the log of wood, the alleged weapon of assault, at the instance of Tongare was also doubtful because a panch witness had said that it was shown to him at the police station, Kode said. Moreover, although the blood group from the blood stains in Tongare’s house, the log of wood and Lata’s clothes matched, there was no trail of blood from the house to the field where her body was found, Kode said.

“...this is a case purely based on circumstantial evidence. None of the above circumstances was proved by the prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt,” the court said, ordering his release from prison.