High court: Conviction can't rest on tutored dying declarations

The Bombay high court observed that if a deceased person has given more than one dying declaration, improving upon the incident after meeting relatives, then it cannot be ruled out that the subsequent dying declarations were made at the instance of the relatives.

Justices BR Gavai and PN Deshmukh of the Nagpur bench acquitted Nirmala and Deepak Dhavle, the mother-in-law and brother-in-law of Pushpa, who died of burn injuries in March 2002.

The court was hearing an appeal filed by Nirmala and Deepak against the life sentence imposed upon them by the sessions court.

Pushpa got married to Omprakash Dhavle, a resident of Buldhana, in 1995. On March 21, 2002, she was taken to a local hospital with severe burn injuries.
According to the prosecution, defore dying, Pushpa made five different declarations — two before an executive magistrate, one before a police officer and two before her siblings.

On the day of the incident, Pushpa said that the cooking stove exploded when she was making tea. The next day, her version of the story changed, and she said that Nirmala poured kerosene over her and Deepak set her on fire.

She improved upon her dying declarations, five in all, where she subsequently named her husband Omprakash and his grandmother. Defence counsel RM Daga brought to the notice of the HC that the subsequent dying declarations were given by Pushpa after meeting her siblings.

Keeping this in mind, the judges acquitted Nirmala and Deepak, saying it cannot be ruled out that Pushpa was tutored. “Subsequent dying declaration which could be subjected to tutoring by the relatives cannot be a sole basis for resting the order of conviction,” the judges said.