Justice After 38 Years: Allahabad High Court Clears Three Men Jailed for Life in a ‘Blind Murder’ Case
By Rajesh Pandey
In a poignant reminder of how long the shadow of a wrongful conviction can stretch, the Allahabad High Court has acquitted three men who had spent decades bearing the weight of a life sentence for a murder they did not commit.
The verdict, delivered nearly 38 years after their conviction, brings delayed but decisive relief to the surviving accused—and raises troubling questions about investigative lapses and trial court errors.
A Division Bench comprising Justice JJ Munir and Justice Sanjiv Kumar held that the prosecution had “utterly failed” to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The judges observed that the trial court had relied on conjecture and an improper appreciation of evidence while sentencing the accused to life imprisonment.
A Case Rooted in the Early 1980s
The case dates back to July 8, 1982, when the informant alleged that his brother was brutally assaulted and beaten to death by a group of assailants.
The FIR claimed that one of the accused had even inserted a lathi into the deceased’s body—an allegation that lent a particularly gruesome edge to the prosecution’s narrative.
The informant further alleged that he was threatened with death if he dared approach the police.
An FIR was eventually lodged at Soraon police station in Allahabad, and an investigation was initiated against 11 accused persons.
In April 1987, the Additional Sessions Judge, Allahabad, convicted all the accused under Sections 147 and 302 read with 149 of the Indian Penal Code, holding that the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.
All were sentenced to life imprisonment.
The verdict was challenged on appeal.
Time, Death, and a Shrinking Dock
As the appeal dragged on for decades, eight of the eleven accused died, their appeals abating with their deaths.
\Only three appellants—Amrit Lal, Harish Chandra, and Kallu—lived long enough to see the High Court finally examine their case on the merits.
For them, the appeal was not merely a legal proceeding; it was a fight to reclaim dignity after a lifetime spent under the stigma of being branded murderers.
High Court Pulls Apart the Prosecution Story
While acknowledging that the deceased had indeed been murdered, the High Court made it clear that the identity of the killers remained unproven.
The judges scrutinized the testimonies of the deceased’s brother and uncle—projected as key witnesses—and found serious gaps.
Notably, there was no clarity on who informed the uncle about the alleged assault. The court reasoned that if an unknown person had intended the information to reach the brother, he would have approached him directly.
The timeline further weakened the prosecution’s case. The court noted that it would have taken at least an hour for the informant to gather villagers and reach the scene.
It found it implausible that 11 assailants, allegedly intent on murder, would assault a man for that long and yet leave only ten injuries on his body.
Human behaviour, the court noted, also did not align with the prosecution’s version.
A man informed that his brother was being beaten would ordinarily rush by the shortest route and possibly arm himself for protection.
Instead, the informant and his uncle reportedly went empty-handed and took a longer route, a conduct the court found suspicious.
Medical Evidence Breaks the Case
Perhaps the most damaging blow to the prosecution came from medical evidence.
While eyewitnesses claimed that a lathi had been driven into the deceased’s body, the post-mortem report recorded no such injury. There was no allegation of negligence against the doctor who conducted the autopsy.
The High Court reiterated settled legal principles: where medical evidence completely contradicts ocular testimony, the latter cannot be relied upon.
“In the present case,” the bench observed, “the medical evidence completely rules out the direct evidence of eye-witnesses. The injuries found on the dead body do not support the dock evidence.”
These contradictions, the court held, struck at the very root of the prosecution’s case.
A ‘Blind Murder’ and a Life Half-Lived
In its judgment dated December 18, the High Court concluded that the murder had likely been committed by unknown persons under the cover of darkness, and that the appellants had been wrongly implicated.
For the three surviving accused, the acquittal brings legal freedom—but after decades lost to incarceration, litigation, and social stigma, it also carries a quiet tragedy.
Eight co-accused died without hearing the words “not guilty.”
The judgment stands as a sobering reflection on the cost of investigative failure and delayed justice—and as a reminder that while courts can correct errors, time lost can never truly be returned.
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