Mumbai: Observing that the entire investigation process comes under suspicion and seems to be done to implicate the accused in the case, a sessions court on Tuesday acquitted Mohammed Shaikh who has spent more than five years in jail on charges of robbing and murdering railway commuter Niraj Jaiswar found fatally injured in the luggage compartment of a local train at CSMT in 2021.
“…prosecution has miserably failed to establish the chain of the circumstances showing the involvement of the accused in the crime and no compliance has been done regarding the CCTV footage retrieved from the railway stations….,” Additional Sessions Judge R S Aradhye said. The court acquitted Shaikh of charges of robbery, murder and destruction of evidence.
The judge also noted that the CCTV footage was not shown to family members of the deceased, family members of the accused, or any independent witness for identification. Merely recognising persons on the basis of CCTV footage, without following a reliable identification procedure, was held insufficient.
The accused was allegedly seen cleaning a knife between 10.07 pm and 10.55 pm, while other material suggested that the deceased was seen alive at Kurla railway station around the same period and even later, according to one part of the prosecution case. The court observed that the prosecution’s own material indicated that “since from 10.07 pm to 10.21 pm, when the accused was found while cleaning the knife… the deceased was alive. On March 29, 2021, the local train arrived at CSMT from Panvel at about 10.47 pm, where a man was found unconscious and injured in the luggage compartment, according to the prosecution.
The court found that there was “no direct eyewitness” who saw the accused and deceased board the same train or travel together. It also noted that no witness had established a “last seen” circumstance connecting Shaikh with Jaiswar immediately before the death. The judge said he would have been the best witness to establish Shaikh’s knowledge, conscious possession or control over the recovered articles.
The court found inconsistencies in the timing shown in the CCTV material. The case was registered at CSMT railway police station. Before railway staff and police could attend to him at CSMT, the train departed again towards Panvel. The deputy station manager at CSMT alerted Wadala railway station, where police constable Ranjit Mane entered the luggage compartment, found the injured man and shifted him to Sion Hospital. The man was declared dead before admission. The court, however, held that the prosecution case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence and failed the settled test for conviction on such evidence. The court also found significance in the fact that articles related to the crime, including a knife, were allegedly recovered from the house of the accused’s brother, but the brother was neither examined as a witness nor was his statement recorded.