Police dog's evidence can be additional evidence: Bombay high court

Holding that a tracking dog's evidence can not be dismissed when there is other supporting pieces of evidence, Bombay high court recently upheld conviction of a man for rape and murder of a young girl.

Division bench of Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice VK Tahilramani, however, commuted the death sentence awarded to Ravindra Kamble (23) by lower court to a life sentence.

High court ruled that Kamble would undergo his life sentence for murder and ten years' sentence for rape one after another, and not simultaneously.

But, more importantly, court ruled that evidence produced by a "tracker dog" which had taken the police in this case to Kamble's house could be relied upon, as an additional piece of evidence.

Kamble, resident of village Nerli in Kolhapur district, was accused to luring away a five-year-old girl, raping her, and murdering her on October 24, 2007. Her body was discovered in a field five days later.

There were at least four witnesses who testified that they had seen girl going with Kamble. Further, when police gave an undergarment found near the body to the tracker dog to sniff, the dog led them to Kamble's place.

Sessions court had awarded death sentence to him. In the high court, Kamble's lawyer argued that case was based on purely circumstantial evidence, and police dog's evidence cannot be relied upon.

But division bench held that police dogs are specially trained, and are used in crime detection world-over. "As far as dog tracking evidence is concerned, it can be one of the circumstances, which may tend to connect the accused with the crime," court said, adding that conviction here was not based solely on dog's evidence.

However, high court held in the judgement last week that the case did not fall in "rarest of rare" category, and commuted the death sentence to a life imprisonment.