"Botched Up Investigation; Possible False Incrimination": Kerala HC Sets Aside Man's Death Sentence After 10 Years In Jail; Orders 5L Compensation

The Kerala High Court has overturned the death sentence of a man after he spent 10 years in jail after being convicted of trespassing with intent to commit robbery, rape, and murder.

The Court found that the investigation was 'botched up', which indicated that he could have been falsely incriminated. Therefore, the Court directed the State Government to pay the appellant an amount of Rs.5,00,000/- as compensation.

In that context, the Bench of Justice AK Jayasankaran Nambiar and Justice Syam Kumar VM has said that, "The circumstantial evidence tendered fails to unerringly point towards the appellant as the perpetrator of the crime. The contention put forth by the counsel for the appellant that witnesses as well as evidence were planted by the police and that the purported recoveries based on disclosure statements were sham and concocted, cannot be brushed aside. Not only does the evidence put forth by the prosecution fail to buttress the hypothesis of guilt of the appellant, the botched up investigation leads us to conclude that appellant could even have been falsely incriminated in the crime. There was no evidence whatsoever before the learned Sessions Judge to convict the appellant under any of the sections of the IPC under which he was charged, much less to sentence him to capital punishment under sec. 302 of the IPC."

The accused was convicted of trespassing with intent to commit robbery, rape, and the murder of a 57-year-old woman in Kollam in 2013. The Court was handling his appeal and the reference for confirmation of the sentence from the Sessions Court.

The High Court also noted that there was a total absence of any semblance of objective enquiry by the Sessions Judge towards ascertaining whether the case at hand was one that qualified under the categorisation ‘rarest of the rare’ justifying the imposition of capital punishment.

In light of the same, the Court observed that, "the ignominy of over 10 years incarceration suffered by him was compounded by the trauma of living through the said period with the ever present threat of death sentence, which made life even more miserable and despairing to the appellant."

Cause Title: State of Kerala vs Gireesh Kumar (Neutral Citation: 2024:KER:48580)

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