HC upholds conviction of man, son for burning spouse alive

The Delhi Excessive Court docket has upheld the conviction of a person and his son for killing his spouse by pouring kerosene and setting her ablaze, relying totally on the dying declarations made by the sufferer in April 2002.

Whereas the husband, Didar Singh, died of most cancers in the course of the pendency of the case, his son and co-accused, Maan Singh, has been absconding since he was let unfastened on bail in 2004.

Throughout a listening to on Friday, a Bench of Justices Subramonium Prasad and Vimal Kumar Yadav remarked, “Deceased [Gian Kaur] had no cause to call her grown-up son or husband to falsely implicate them. She had nothing to achieve.”

The court docket accepted {that a} Safdarjung Hospital physician recorded her dying declaration, discovering it “free from any taint like undue affect, fabrication, stress, inducement”.

The incident dates again to the early hours of April 5, 2002, when, alarmed by neighbours, Gian’s daughter Taranjeet Kaur rushed to the terrace to seek out her mom in flames. With the assistance of her brother, Maan, she rushed her mom to Safdarjung Hospital, the place Gian, in her declaration, said that her husband and son had poured kerosene on her and set her ablaze. She repeated the identical assertion to the investigating officer, and some hours later, she succumbed to her accidents.

Police registered a case underneath Part 302 (homicide) of the Indian Penal Code in opposition to her husband and son, who have been convicted of homicide by a trial court docket in 2002.

The convicts appealed the trial court docket’s 2002 conviction by shifting the Excessive Court docket that very same yr.

In its 17-page judgment, the Excessive Court docket said, “Demise may result from accident, suicide, or murder. This case just isn’t the primary two, as there aren’t any indicators of accident or suicide.”

The court docket stated the statements have been admissible proof as a result of it believed an individual dealing with loss of life is unlikely to lie.

“These statements may be oral or written and are admissible in circumstances the place the particular person’s loss of life is in query, serving as an exception to the rule in opposition to rumour proof,” the court docket added.