Related eyewitness testimony may sustain conviction when corroborated, but omission of overt acts defeats liability for other accused.

Related or interested eyewitness testimony can be accepted when it is natural, consistent and corroborated by prompt contemporaneous conduct, the earliest report and surrounding circumstances; on that basis, the Court found the High Court had wrongly discarded the injured and related witnesses and restored the convictions of Accused 1 to 11 and 16 to 19. Where the earliest report did not name Accused 12 to 15 and no specific overt act was attributed to them, mere association with the and recovery material was insufficient to sustain convictions, so their acquittal was maintained.

---

---

Issues: (i) Whether the High Court was justified in discarding the eyewitness evidence of the injured and related witnesses and in acquitting the accused persons charged with murder and allied offences; (ii) Whether the conviction of Accused 12 to 15 could be sustained on the evidence on record.

Issue (i): Whether the High Court was justified in discarding the eyewitness evidence of the injured and related witnesses and in acquitting the accused persons charged with murder and allied offences.

Analysis: The evidence of the witnesses was to be tested by the settled standard of careful scrutiny, not by demanding implicit proof. The prompt report naming several accused, the immediate conduct of the witnesses, the recovery of parts of the deceased from the river, and the consistency between the earliest report and the testimony in court supported the prosecution version. The relatedness of the witnesses did not by itself destroy credibility when their evidence was natural, consistent, and substantially corroborated by the surrounding circumstances.

Conclusion: The High Court erred in rejecting the prosecution evidence; the acquittal of Accused 1 to 11 and 16 to 19 was set aside and their convictions were restored.

Issue (ii): Whether the conviction of Accused 12 to 15 could be sustained on the evidence on record.

Analysis: The earliest report did not name these accused, and the eyewitnesses did not attribute any specific overt act to them. Their mere association with the incident and the subsequent recovery of body parts or other articles was insufficient, without direct or reliable evidence connecting them to the assault, to sustain convictions for the substantive offences charged.

Conclusion: The acquittal of Accused 12 to 15 was maintained.

Final Conclusion: The appeals succeeded only in part, resulting in restoration of the convictions of Accused 1 to 11 and 16 to 19, while the acquittal of Accused 12 to 15 remained undisturbed.

Ratio Decidendi: Related or interested eyewitness testimony may be relied upon if it is natural, consistent, and sufficiently corroborated by prompt contemporaneous conduct and surrounding circumstances; where the earliest version omits certain accused and no overt act is proved against them, their convictions cannot be sustained.

---