Cogent proof must for conviction: LHC

The Lahore High Court (LHC) has observed that circumstantial evidence leading to conviction in a case must be convincing, conclusive and devoid of any explanation other than the guilt of the accused. The LHC Bahawalpur Bench Justice Ali Zia Bajwa elaborated the three conditions while acquitting a man sentenced to life imprisonment by a trial court on charges of murdering his wife and daughter.

The judge observed that the case hinged upon the testimony of a prosecution witness, Khalil, that he saw the appellant throwing a girl aged about five years into a canal as well as circumstantial evidence. The circumstantial evidence included testimony about where the victims were last seen, recovery of the bodies, pointing out of the place of occurrence, confession allegedly made by the appellant before witnesses, medical record, recovery of a shawl and motive.

“I would like to weigh the evidence available on the record to determine whether it is sufficient to hold the appellant guilty,”Justice Bajwa observed. "It would not be out of place to observe that in cases of circumstantial evidence, there must be a chain of evidence so complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for a conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and it must be such as to show that within all human probability the act must have been done by the accused," he declared.

The judge observed after a detailed analysis of apex court judgments that in order to sustain the conviction in a case of circumstantial evidence, "The facts and circumstances from which an inference of guilt is pursued to be drawn, must be established through cogent and convincing evidence of unimpeachable character.

"Those circumstances should be of a conclusive nature having propensity accurately pointing towards the guilt of the accused; and the entire evidence available on the record when taken cumulatively should be in form of a chain, which is compact enough to establish that there is no escape from the conclusion that within all probabilities the crime was authored by the accused and none else."