Observing that when public opinion influences an investigation, its very course gets diverted with “exasperating results”, A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court has acquitted two non-tribal persons who were arraigned as accused in the case relating to the rape and murder of a tribal woman following public protests.
Acquitting the accused, Mani and Rajan from Agali in Palakkad, in the case registered in 2005, the Bench comprising Justice K. Vinod Chandran and Justice Ziyad Rahman A.A. observed that the tribal woman was murdered and the suspect was her confidant who was from the same community.
“However, the community rose in arms against the implication of their own community member and the police removed him from the array of suspects and proceeded against the two other suspects from a different community with a higher caste status, alleging offences not only under the Indian Penal Code but also under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989,” the court observed.
The prosecutor submitted that the entire case of the prosecution was built on the evidence of Jungan, who “surrendered” at a police station claiming that he had murdered her. Initially, he was one of the suspects but nothing had come out in the investigation to arraign him as an accused.
The court observed that there was nothing to connect the accused to the crime other than the testimony of Jungan, “whom we suspect, as being interested in either saving himself or covering up the actual facts. The incident happened more than a decade and a half ago and that alone inhibits us from ordering a further investigation.”
