Thane, March 18 A court in Thane, Maharashtra, has acquitted five men in a 2018 case of kidnapping and murder, in which the victim's body was allegedly thrown from a local train, observing that the prosecution failed to prove the chain of circumstantial evidence.
Principal District and Sessions Judge S B Agrawal, in his judgment delivered on Wednesday, cleared Ravi Ashok Choudhary (37), Rajendraprasad Shivyadnya Tiwari (47), Sanjivkumar Upadhyay (38), Ashokkumar Shukla (40), and Ramashankar Tiwari (28) of all charges, including murder and criminal conspiracy.
The prosecution alleged that the victim, Surendra Mishra, was murdered because of his relationship with the daughter of the accused, Rajendraprasad Tiwari.
The prosecution claimed that Mishra was lured to a garage in Mulund in Mumbai, and was killed after being assaulted with a wooden log. After that, his body was transported in a three-wheeler to the Mulund railway station, and taken in a local train and thrown on the railway tracks between Khadavli and Washind stations.
However, the court found the evidence insufficient to link the accused to the crime.
"At the outset, it would be apposite to mention that the entire case of the prosecution is based on circumstantial evidence and none of the witnesses examined by the prosecution, in any way and at any place, witnessed the incident," the court said.
The key witnesses, including the victim's girlfriend and adjacent shop owners, did not support the prosecution's theory, it said.
"It appears that all the investigation has been carried out only on the basis of suspicion...In fact, the motive attributed is also not clearly and cogently proved. There is no evidence to show that the victim and the accused were last seen together," the court added.
The medical evidence from the post-mortem notes is also consistent with (the theory of) an accident, and considering all the aforesaid circumstances, the parameters for bringing home the guilt of the accused that are required to be met by the prosecution in a case based on circumstantial evidence cannot be said to be made out, it said.