India | Supreme Court acquits man sentenced to death for rape and murder of 3-year-old

The Court said that the investigation was tainted and flawed, based on conjectures and surmises.

The Supreme Court recently acquitted a man sentenced to the death penalty for the rape and murder of a three-year-old girl for lack of evidence [Ramkirat Munilal Goud v. State of Maharashtra].

The Bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol and Sandeep Mehta noted that the entire case was built on circumstantial evidence, requiring the prosecution to establish an unbroken chain of facts leading to only one conclusion: the guilt of the accused. However, the Court observed that the evidence presented was unreliable, inconsistent and marked by significant procedural lapses.

“In case of any breach in the chain of incriminating circumstances, the Court would be left with no option but to acquit the accused by giving him the benefit of doubt,” the Court said.

The case arose from the alleged rape and murder of a three-year-old girl in Thane, Maharashtra in September 2013. The girl went missing while playing outside her home, and her body was found two days later in a pond. The accused, a 25-year-old watchman, was arrested based on three pieces of circumstantial evidence - the girl and him were last seen together, an alleged extra-judicial confession and forensic analysis of soil samples.

The trial court convicted the appellant in 2019 for offences under Sections 302 (murder), 376(2)(i) (rape), 363 (kidnapping), and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC), and Sections 4 and 8 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO Act). It sentenced the appellant to death, observing that the case fell into the ‘rarest of rare’ category.

The Bombay High Court upheld the conviction and death sentence in 2021. The appellant then approached the Supreme Court, challenging both the conviction and the death sentence.

"A flawed and tainted investigation"

The Supreme Court found serious flaws in each link of the prosecution's circumstantial chain. It noted that the last-seen-together evidence, which formed a critical part of the prosecution’s case, was unreliable and appeared to have been fabricated by the investigating officers. The Court pointed out that key witnesses did not come forward with their accounts until several days after the child went missing, despite police being present in the area throughout the search.

The Court also rejected the alleged extra-judicial confession, noting that the witness who claimed to have heard the confession made significant improvements in his testimony.

The forensic evidence, which included a report matching soil found on the accused’s shoes to mud near the pond where the body was recovered, was also found to be scientifically unsound and inconclusive. The Court observed that the prosecution had failed to exclude other plausible sources for the soil, rendering this evidence unreliable.

The Court took strong exception to the investigative lapses that led to the wrongful conviction, emphasising that the prosecution had failed to meet the basic standards of proof required for a criminal conviction. It noted that the prosecution’s approach appeared to have been driven by a desire to secure a conviction at all costs, without regard for the fundamental principles of criminal justice.

“Thus, we are compelled to hold that flawed and tainted investigation has eventually led to the failure of the prosecution case involving the gruesome rape and murder of a child at the tender age of 3 years and 9 months only,” the Court said.

With this, the top court acquitted the man who spent 12 years in jail and ordered his immediate release.

The appellant was represented by Senior Advocate Raghenth Basant, along with Advocates Fauzia Shakil, Aathma Sudhir Kumar, Shreya Rastogi, Pratiksha Basarkar, Kaushitaki Sharma and Hima Bhardwaj.

Advocates Rukhmini Bobde, Siddharth Dharmadhikari, Aaditya Aniruddha Pande, Soumya Priyadarshinee, Vinayak Aren, Amlaan Kumar, Jatin Dhamija and Naveen Kumar Bhardwaj appeared for the State of Maharashtra.

Source: barandbench.com, Ritwik Choudhury, May 16, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde