Framing of charge requires grave suspicion; inconsistent witness statements and no independent link cannot sustain a murder charge.

At the stage of framing charge, the court must see whether the prosecution material, taken at face value, discloses the ingredients of the offence and creates grave suspicion. The Delhi HC noted that the earliest statements of the complainant and relatives named only two persons and expressly excluded others, while the petitioner's name surfaced later in delayed supplementary statements with material improvements and no explanation for the shift. As no other charge-sheet material independently linked the petitioner to the incident, the later version was unsafe to rely on. The charge under Section 302/34 IPC was therefore set aside and the petitioner discharged.

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Issues: Whether the order framing charge under Section 302/34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 could be sustained when the prosecution material contained contradictory eye-witness statements and no other material connected the petitioner with the alleged offence.

Analysis: At the stage of framing charge, the court is required to examine the prosecution material only to determine whether the facts emerging from it, taken at face value, disclose the ingredients of the alleged offence and whether there is grave suspicion warranting trial. The material on record showed that the first statements of the complainant, the brother of the deceased and the widow of the deceased named only two persons and expressly stated that there was no suspicion against anyone else. The petitioner's name appeared only in supplementary statements recorded after a substantial delay, and those later statements introduced material improvements without explaining the change. No other document in the charge-sheet independently connected the petitioner with the incident. In such a situation, the later version was unsafe to rely upon for creating grave suspicion.

Conclusion: The charge could not be sustained against the petitioner, and the order framing charge was liable to be set aside.

Final Conclusion: The petition succeeded and the petitioner was discharged from the prosecution on the basis that the material did not disclose the requisite grave suspicion for proceeding to trial.

Ratio Decidendi: Where the prosecution material at the stage of charge consists of mutually inconsistent statements and the earlier version does not implicate the accused, a charge cannot be framed unless the record independently discloses grave suspicion against the accused.

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