Mumbai: Setting aside the conviction and death sentence of a man (then 29) in the Dec 2016 rape and murder of a physiotherapist (24) in a Mumbai suburb, Bombay High Court held that the prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he committed the offence.
“The evidence led by the prosecution in support of the charge levelled against the accused, in our view, consists of weak, disconnected and/or unequivocal circumstances and in the wake of the nature of such evidence, merely based on suspicion, however strong, cannot take place of proof,” said Justices Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande in the Sept 7 verdict uploaded on Thursday. They dismissed the state’s death sentence confirmation plea and ordered Debashish Dhara “to be set at liberty. ”
On Dec 6 around 3 am, a neighbour alerted her parents about smoke coming from her room which was bolted from outside. Dhara, employed in a nearby jewellery store, was apprehended on Jan 28, 2017, from Kolkata. On Oct 10, 2019, additional sessions judge A D Deo found Dhara guilty of several charges, including rape, murder and unnatural sexual offences.
Advocate Siddharth Jagushte, for the victim’s father, said DNA profiling established Dhara was the author of the crime. The victim stayed with her family in a chawl. She slept in a separate mezzanine room in front of her house. After dousing the fire, she was found with jeans wrapped around her neck. HC noted that the sessions court had held that the prosecution had established a chain of circumstances linking him to the crime. Prosecutor Tanveer Khan relied on chemical analysis/DNA report of bloodstains found on Dhara’s jeans and a comb that matched the victim’s sample and on CCTV footage. Dhara’s advocate Yug Chaudhary argued that the prosecution failed to establish his guilt from evidence on record.