Testimony of victim’s kin can lead to conviction: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court (SC) has held that in criminal cases such as murder, eyewitness account of a victim’s close relatives can be considered crucial piece of evidence as they would not implicate an innocent person by shielding the actual accused.

Justices B Sudershan Reddy and JM Panchal ruled this during the hearing of an appeal by murder accused Kirpal Singh, who shot his uncle Ram Kumar and hurt another relative, Shanti Devi, on May 30, 1983, to settle an old family dispute.

The wives of accused Kirpal and victim Ram Kumar are cousins.
The court said there couldn’t be any reason to doubt that Jishna (Kumar’s wife), who was accompanying her husband on their way to a village in Uttar Pradesh, had told a lie that she had seen Singh kill her husband.

Rejecting Singh’s appeal seeking acquittal in the case, the SC said Jishna’s evidence was truthful and coherent and couldn’t be disbelieved by a court. Jishna lodged an FIR soon after the murder. Her testimony was corroborated by her son Rupender Kumar, who said Singh had killed his father. “Though this witness was cross-examined at length, no dent could be made in his assertion that the deceased had died because of the gun shot fired by Singh,” the SC noted.

“The appreciation of evidence by the trial court and HC is neither perverse nor unreasonable,” the bench said.