INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has said that a person should not be convicted solely on the basis of dying declaration if there is some doubt
about its veracity and acquitted a person who was convicted and sentenced to death for burning his son and two brothers to death on the
basis of statements made by the deceased before dying.A bench of Justices B R Gavai, J B Pardiwala and Prashant Kumar Mishra said that
acceptability of dying declaration is high because it is done by a person at the time of death when every motive to falsehood is silenced,
and the man is induced by the most powerful consideration to speak only the truth
alone in the cases where suspicion, like the case on hand is raised, as regards the correctness of the dying declaration
In such cases, the Court may have to look for some corroborative evidence by treating the dying declaration only as a piece of evidence
The evidence and material available on record must be properly weighed in each case to arrive at an appropriate conclusion
The reason why we say so is that in the case on hand, although the appellant-convict has been named in the two dying declarations as a
person who set the room on fire, yet the surrounding circumstances render such statements of the declarants very doubtful," the bench
said.The bench, after examining all the evidence and statements of witness and dying declarations, said that there were contradictions and
it had to either believe the dying declarations or the oral evidence of the eyewitnesses
It accepted the plea of senior advocate Gopal Sankaranarayanan who, appearing for the convict, submitted that dying declarations did not
The benefit of doubt must always go in favour of the accused
It is true that dying declaration is a substantive piece of evidence to be relied on provided it is proved that the same was voluntary and
truthful and the victim was in a fit state of mind
It is just not enough for the court to say that the dying declaration is reliable as the accused is named in the dying declaration as the
