Man acquitted of murder as prosecution fails to prove offence

A local court has acquitted a man accused of murdering a woman while holding that the prosecution failed to prove any motive behind the offence against him.
According to prosecution, the accused, Tarunkumar Balikaran Warma alias Patel (45), a resident of Manpada locality of Thane city, used to frequently visit his neighbour Radhabhai Indrapal Singh's food joint for the needy and later they developed intimacy.
On October 20, 2012, Tarunkumar took her out to a hotel and on return allegedly killed Radhabai and dumped her body near a housing complex. The next day, the accused returned home with blood stained cloths, the prosecution told the court in its submission.

The accused was tried under sections 302 (murder), 497 (adultery) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender).
Defence counsel Ramrao Jagtap, while contesting the allegations in his submission, placed his reliance on at least half-a-dozen rulings of the apex and high courts and claimed that the accused was not involved in the crime.
The entire case was based on circumstantial evidence, and there were no eye-witnesses to the incident, he contended.

After hearing both the sides, District Judge A S Bhaisare noted, "If the accused had illicit relations with the deceased, in absence of any motive, he would not have committed murder of the deceased."

"There were no cross terms between the accused and deceased. So also, there were no cross terms between the accused and husband of deceased or the family of deceased, so motive behind the crime plays an important role in the case which is based on circumstantial evidence. Prosecution failed to bring on record any motive behind the crime," the judge observed.
Acquitting the accused of all the charges, the Judge further noted that "prosecution has examined as many as 21 witnesses in the matter, means they have increased the quantity of the witnesses and not quality in evidence to bring home the guilt of the accused."

"Having considered the material on record and discussed evidence, in my view, the prosecution failed to prove the alleged offence against the accused beyond all reasonable doubt," the judge said in a recent order.