Supreme Court Acquits Man Convicted For Murdering Mother, Says Suicide Can't Be Ruled Out

The Supreme Court on Wednesday (October 8) acquitted a man who was convicted for a murder of his mother (matricide), after noting that the entire case rests upon the circumstantial evidence and the prosecution failed to prove the guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

A bench of Justices KV Viswanathan and K Vinod Chandran found that the appellant-accused was falsely implicated as the prosecution failed to prove that the death of the deceased was at all homicidal in nature, as the medical evidence showed that the deceased was suffering from schizophrenia and may have died by suicide, a fact not disproved by the prosecution.

The case related to an incident in Maharashtra (Taloni Village, Ambajogai) in 2010. The police received an anonymous tip about a "doubtful death." Upon arriving, they found a crowd attempting to hurriedly cremate the body of deceased. When police announced it was a murder, the crowd dispersed. The investigation that followed led to the conviction of Sunanda's son, Nilesh-Appellant.

The prosecution alleged that the Appellant was residing with the deceased and had organized the cremation in a hurried manner which forms a motive under Section 8 of the Evidence Act.

The trial court convicted the Appellant and sentenced him to life imprisonment, which was confirmed by the Bombay High Court, leading to an appeal before the Supreme Court.

Setting aside the concurrent findings, the judgment authored by Justice Viswanathan found the very genesis of the case flawed. The Court expressed "serious doubt" about the most basic premise of the case whether the deceased was murdered at all.

The doctor had opined the cause of death was "asphyxia due to strangulation." However, during cross-examination, he admitted that the absence of a ligature mark on the back of the neck, a key finding in this case is "possible in case of hanging." He further stated that in a typical strangulation, the mark should be present all around the neck.

“We are constrained to hold that, based on the deposition of Dr. PW-6 examined by the prosecution, a serious doubt arises as to whether at all the deceased died a homicidal death. The candid admission of PW-6 that in the absence of ligature mark on the back side of the neck hanging cannot be ruled out and the further reinforcement that in strangulation ligature mark should be present all around the neck lead us to conclude that this is not a case where we can safely opine that the death was by homicide. There is no definite medical opinion and in view of the considerable ambiguity in the evidence of PW-6, death by suicide, cannot be said to be completely ruled out.”, the court said.

"There is a mystery surrounding the genesis and origin of the prosecution case," the court said, noting that the police never investigated who in the crowd had organized the cremation and crucially, no witness placed the Appellant at that initial scene.

“The police team noticed injuries on the body of the deceased and had the body taken down from the pyre. When it was announced that the deceased had been murdered, evidence is that the crowd ran away from the spot. Thereafter, as per the prosecution case, an inquest was got done followed by a post mortem by PW-6 and papers handed over to Sunil Shrinivas (PW-9) who registered a FIR at 0045 hours on 23.07.2010. No leads from the crowd, who gathered there, have been picked out and nobody has been examined in Court. There is no evidence to show that the present appellant was present at the site of the first attempted cremation, or any of the relatives of the deceased.”, the court said.

“The medical evidence adduced through PW-6 Dr. Salunke and the post mortem report Ex.36 has also not conclusively established homicide. The recoveries alleged, to say the least, do not lend assurance to our minds about their genuineness. The motive alleged has not been established…. The courts below have fallen into a serious error in convicting the appellant on the basis of the evidence on record.”, the court held.

Accordingly, the appeal was allowed, and the conviction was set aside.

Cause Title: Nilesh Baburao Gitte VERSUS State of Maharashtra

Citation : 2025 LiveLaw (SC) 985

Click here to read/download the judgment

Appearance:

Mr. K. Parmeshwar, senior counsel with Sh. Dilip Annasaheb Taur, counsel for the appellant

Mr. Adarsh Dubey, Counsel for the State of Maharashtra.