The Calcutta High Court has upheld the conviction and life sentences of three appellants convicted for dacoity with murder in connection with the brutal killing of two women in Burdwan district. A Division Bench heard appeals arising from a Sessions Court judgment and sentence dated April 2018, in which the appellants were found guilty of committing dacoity and murdering their victims inside a house in Village Kandra on October 1, 2011. The two victims, the landlady and her tenant, were discovered with their throats slit and numerous gold ornaments and personal belongings missing, indicating that the assailants had committed the murders in the course of stealing from the house.
The prosecution’s case was built entirely on circumstantial evidence, including testimony that the accused had been seen at the victims’ house shortly before the incident, and subsequent disclosure statements by the appellants during investigation. Searches of their respective homes led to the recovery of stolen ornaments and the weapons allegedly used in the crime. Identification of the recovered property as belonging to the victims was confirmed by relatives in a properly conducted identification parade and later in court. Medical evidence established that the deaths were homicidal in nature and caused by sharp cutting weapons, sufficing to prove the act in the ordinary course of nature.
The appellants challenged their convictions on multiple grounds, including alleged absence of motive, contradictions in witness evidence, procedural defects in the identification parade, and errors in the trial court’s examination of them under the criminal procedure code. They also contended that the chain of circumstances had not been satisfactorily established against them. The High Court, after examining the record, rejected these contentions and held that the prosecution had succeeded in proving a complete and unbroken chain of circumstantial evidence pointing to the guilt of the appellants. The court distinguished its decision from precedents relied upon by the defence by noting that the facts of the present case supported lawful recovery of stolen property and credible identification of the items in question, and that the appellants had offered no plausible explanation for how they came into possession of the stolen articles.
Accordingly, the High Court affirmed the convictions under the Indian Penal Code for offences including house trespass, dacoity with murder, murder and dishonest receiving of stolen property. The life sentences imposed by the trial court were upheld, with other concurrent sentences remaining in force. The appeals were dismissed, the connected applications disposed of, and the appellants were directed to be given set-off for the period they had already spent in custody. The judgment emphasises that where circumstantial evidence is complete and cogent, and corroborated by recovery of stolen property and medical proof of homicidal death, convictions and life sentences in serious offences such as dacoity with murder will be sustained on appeal.
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