LI NETWORK
Supreme Court bench of Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice MR Shah held if the victim has given more than one dying statement then each statement should be “independently evaluated on merit”.
Supreme Court while hearing an appeal of a man from Karnataka and upheld his conviction, awarded by the Karnataka High Court, held that the facts of one statement cannot be dismissed because of any contradiction of another statement in case of a dying declaration.
Supreme Court bench of Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice MR Shah, quoting from few previous verdicts, held that if victim has given many statements before dying, then every statement should be evaluated separately.
“A dying declaration is admissible as evidence under Section 32 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. It alone can also form the basis for conviction if it has been made voluntarily and inspires confidence,” the SC said in its verdict. “If there are contradictions about its truthfulness, the benefit of doubt shall have to be given to the accused,” .
In the present matter, A man named Nagabhushan in Karnataka had burnt his wife to death demanding dowry. The wife had recorded two statements before she died and there was a contradiction in facts in both the statements.
The lower court had acquitted the convict because of the two dying declarations with contradictory facts. After the appeal, the Karnataka High Court sentenced the accused husband to life imprisonment. Later convict moved to the Supreme Court.
Before her death, the victim had made a statement that the incident of fire was just an accident. In her second statement, recorded in front of her parents, she said that her husband had set her on fire. She informed the police that in her first statement she narrated the incident as an accident because her husband had threatened to kill the children.