Madras High Court (M.S. Ramesh and V. Lakshminarayanan, JJ.; common judgment delivered by V. Lakshminarayanan, J.) allowed six criminal appeals under Section 374(2) Cr.P.C. / Section 415(11) BNSS and set aside the conviction and sentence dated 20.09.2018 in S.C.No.70 of 2014 (II Additional District & Sessions Judge, Chidambaram) under Sections 147/148, 294(b), 436 and 302 (302 read with 149) IPC for the murder of Sampath Kumar on 26.02.2013, granting the benefit of doubt to all appellants because: (i) two of the three alleged motives (electoral rivalry; previous night's altercation) were rejected, only the enmity from the deceased's dismissal from panchayat service by A1 being accepted; (ii) the express FIR, though lodged at 9:30 a.m., reached the Magistrate's Court barely 200 metres away only at 1:00 p.m., the delay being unexplained; (iii) independent witnesses were not examined though about 100 persons allegedly saw the daytime occurrence and two such witnesses (Shanmugam and Swaminathan) were not produced, PW5 to PW11 having turned hostile; (iv) PW1, PW3 and PW4 contradicted each other on the place of occurrence, attributed cut injuries to weapons capable only of blunt injury (applying Budhwa @ Ramcharan v. State of M.P., 1991 Supp (1) SCC 9), and assigned impossibly specific overt acts in a group attack, indicating exaggeration; (v) the recovery of weapons was itself contradictory (PW12 v. PW1); (vi) A11 to A14 figured neither in Ex.P1 nor in the Section 164 Cr.P.C. statement, which was never produced, and were implicated only through an alleged confession of 05.03.2013 - the trial court's reliance on the unproduced 164 statement was held perverse; and (vii) the expert opinion on time of death (Section 45, Indian Evidence Act) being a mere approximation, the defence plea based on the 18-to-36-hours estimate failed. Ocular evidence was denied priority over medical evidence (explaining Pruthiviraj Jayantibhai Vanol v. Dinesh Dayabhai Vala, (2022) 18 SCC 683) as the eyewitness accounts were exaggerated. Convictions set aside; appellants set at liberty; A11, in custody since 01.04.2013, to be released forthwith unless required elsewhere; connected Crl.M.Ps. closed.
