The High Court said that the discrepancies alone between the statement given by prosecution’s star witness – a ragpicker named Monu – under Section 161 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) and Section 164 CrPC does not persuade it to discard the testimony.
However, the star witness had also corrected himself to say that he was not a witness but a ‘secret informer’, the Court noted.
It further observed that despite allegedly witnessing the crime himself, he did not inform the PCR or any police official or any other person about the incident on the day of the crime.
Monu had also accepted that on the day of the incident there had been a verbal altercation between him and the accused and they were made to sit in the police station for five to six days.
“This, in our view, gives rise to a serious possibility of false implications. No evidence is led as to the verbal altercation, which PW-1 (Monu) admits to. No evidence is led as to the detention of PW-1 and the accused persons in the police station for several days, to which PW-1 deposes. This creates doubt in our minds as to the credibility of PW-1 as an eyewitness,” the Court said.
Source: Barandbench
