Criminal Appeal no-1222 of 2019
High Court of Delhi
BENCH: Hon’ble Mr. Manmohan J., Hon’ble Mr. Sangita Dhingra Sehgal J.
DATE OF JUDGMENT: 20-02-2020
BRANCH OF FORENSIC SCIENCE: Voice Analysis (Forensic Physics)
RELEVANT SECTIONS/ACTS:
Indian penal code (IPC) act, 1860
- Section 363 – Punishment for kidnapping.
- Section 365 – Kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine a person.
- Section 364(A) – Kidnapping or abducting to murder.
- Section 302 – Punishment for murder.
- Section 120(B) – Concealing design to commit offence punishable with imprisonment.
- Section 34 – Acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention.
Indian Arms Act, 1959
- Section 25 – Punishment for certain offences.
- Section 27 – Punishment for using arms, etc.
BACK STORY
On 24.02.2004, the complaint lodged by the (PW-8) (Pramod)(maternal uncle of the deceased), with the police station Badarpur against Satinder (A-2), Vikas (A-3) and Vinod(A-4) stating that the deceased Pradeep Kumar found missing and ransom calls were made to the PW-7 Indravati,( mother of deceased ) demanding Rs.10 lakhs.
Briefly stating the fact of the case, on 23.02.2004, Pradeep returned to the house from his school at about 1.40 PM. Her mother told him to go for tuition as it was 3 PM and the Pradeep denied as he was not feeling well so he went to his friend’s house Vinod(A-3) in his neighbourhood for playing carom and Pradeep( victim) doesn’t return home till 10:30 P.M as (A-4) along with Satinder (A-2), Vikas(A-3) and Sudhakar (A-5) had kidnapped and took the deceased Pradeep to show him Metro Rail for demanding ransom where they killed him at Banderwala Park and the call received by the PW-2 (SI Ajay Kumar), IC Mobile Crime Team, North District that the dead body of victim found in Banderwala Park within the jurisdiction of Police Station Sarai Rohilla. The body sent to the mortuary, Sabzi Mandi where PW-13 (SI Ravi Shankar), (PW-8) (Pramod), and (PW-9) (Vijay Singh) identified the body.
During Investigation, Accused no. 4 accepted his guilt disclosed the name of other accused persons then, PW-8 (ACP R.S. Dahiya) installed voice recording instrument with the landline phone installed at the house of Indravati and then the ransom call taped and converted into a cassette with the help of the tape recorder and sent to the CFSL for voice analysis of the (A nos. 1-4). The Satinder (A-2) found with Knife was sent to the CFSL sketch expert to establish the link that the murder did with this knife and the bloodstains found on the knife were of the deceased and Vikas (A-3) recovered with the pant of deceased at his house by the investigative agency.
POSTMORTEM REPORT
On 26.3.2004, the postmortem of the deceased was conducted by the PW-3 (Dr. Jayan M.G), who posted as Senior Resident AIIMS, New Delhi. He examined the ante-mortem injuries and the done the internal examination of the organs of the body and post-mortem report reveals that the cause of death of the deceased was due to shock caused by injury number 1 (Incised wound of size 9 x 5 cms on uppermost of the neck) and injury number 3 (Incised wound of size 7 X 1 cms places transversely on the right anterior aspect of the neck) due to a sharp-edged weapon which is sufficient to cause death in the ordinary course of nature. Therefore, it is established that the cause of death of the deceased (Pradeep) was due to a sharp-edged weapon, similar to the blood-stained knife which recovered at the instance of A-2 (Satinder). The medical evidence, therefore, fortifies the case of the Appellant and points towards the guilt of (A-2to 4)
CFSL SKETCH REPORT
The knife sent to the CFSL the sketch of which Ex C2 prepared by the doctor of CFSL and the total length of the knife is shown in the sketch report is 22.5 cm, the length of the blade as 11 cm leading to the inference that the length of the handle of the knife is 11.5 cm.
On the other hand, the sketch prepared by the IO of the recovered knife found from the accused Satinder has a total length of 23.9 cm, length of the blade as 11.2 cm, and the length of the handle of the knife as 12.7 cm.
There these contradictions in the description and measurement of the knife not only create serious doubt about the recovery of the knife/weapon of offense from accused Satinder but also throw doubt on CFSL report that the knife contained human blood of ‘B’ Group and no fingerprints of accused were found on the said knife.
VOICE IDENTIFICATION REPORT
The IO sent the recorded cassette and sent it to the CFSL for spectrographic analysis and the voice of ransom call was found to be made of Sudhakar @ Diwakar @ Chhotu (A -5) and also identified by the Indravti, Vinod (A-4), but The cassette containing the recorded version of the ransom call was neither sealed in a proper manner and sample of (Sudhakar) was never collected to check whether his matched with that of the ransom caller, therefore, serves as a weak piece of evidence to connect to A-5
JUDGMENT
The court framed the charges to accused (2-4) i.e. Satinder(A-2), Vikas (A-3), Vinod (A-4) under sections 363/365/364A/302/120B/34 IPC and the charge under section 25 of Arms Act was also framed against the accused Satinder only to which he pleaded not guilty and claimed trial.