The Supreme Court has set aside the conviction of a man who was awarded the death sentence for the alleged rape and murder of a three-month-old infant girl and has ordered a retrial in the case, noting that the accused was not provided the "proper opportunity" by the trial court to defend himself.
The petition to overturn the trial court verdict was granted by a three-judge SC bench led by Justice BR Gavai. The bench also comprised Justices PS Narasimha and Prashant Kumar Mishra. The appellant, Naveen, approached the top court after the trial court verdict was upheld by the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
"We are of the considered view that the trial court conducted the trial in a hurried manner without giving proper opportunity to the accused to defend himself," the bench was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.
"Therefore, the judgement of conviction and sentence passed by the trial court and affirmed by the high court is hereby set aside and the matter is remitted back to the trial court for de novo (new) trial by affording proper opportunity to the appellant to defend himself," it added.
The top court also observed that the accused wasn't given ample time to produce, during the trial, the experts who filed the DNA and FSL reports as they were government servants and could not have attended the court at his request.
"The trial court treated the accused as if he is carrying a magic wand which is available to produce highly qualified experts, who are government servants, on a phone call. There was no opportunity, in the real sense, to the appellant to cross-examine the experts," the SC bench said while delivering its judgment.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde