Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court has upheld the life sentence of a man convicted of murdering his wife in 2015, holding that procedural lapses in the investigation cannot outweigh clear and consistent evidence establishing guilt.
A division bench of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha and Justice Ajay Kumar Gupta observed that omissions such as non-exhibition of a disclosure statement or minor discrepancies in official records do not vitiate a prosecution case when substantive evidence remains intact. The case relates to the killing of a woman during the intervening night of September 28 and 29, 2015, at her parental home, where she had been staying with her two minor children after returning from her matrimonial home due to ill-treatment. The accused, her husband, was residing there at the time.
The couple’s minor daughter, about five and a half years old then, was an eyewitness. She testified that the accused first assaulted her mother on the head with a bamboo, causing her to fall, and then sat on her chest and attacked her neck and head with a knife. She stated that after the assault, the accused locked her inside the room with her injured mother and fled.
The High Court noted that the trial court had assessed the child’s competence before recording her testimony and rejected the defence claim that she was tutored, holding that minor variations did not affect the core prosecution case.
Medical evidence showed multiple lacerated head injuries and a deep cut-throat wound extending to the vertebra. The autopsy doctor opined that death was ante-mortem, homicidal, and caused by a sharp cutting weapon.
Rejecting the defence argument that recovery of the knife was unreliable due to non-exhibition of the disclosure statement and absence of forensic examination, the bench held that such lapses were not fatal. It clarified that a disclosure statement is not substantive evidence and that recovery was proved through oral testimony of seizure witnesses.
The court also dismissed objections regarding discrepancies in dates and incomplete police station details in the FIR as minor irregularities. Finding no reason to interfere, it dismissed the appeal, affirmed the conviction and sentence, and directed transmission of the judgment and records to the trial court.