SC reprimands Allahabad HC for casual approach

New Delhi, Aug 11 (UNI) The Supreme Court has severely reprimanded Allahabad High Court for dealing with a death reference case in a casual manner.

A bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and D K Jain, while setting aside the impugned judgement of the High Court acquitting the accused people, one of whom was awarded death sentence by the trial court, requested the High Court to explore the possibility of disposal of the appeals and reference made to it relating to the confirmation of death sentence within a period of six months from the date of receipt of the copy of the judgement.

The apex court in its judgement, pronounced yesterday, noted ''to say the least, the approach of High Court is clearly unsupportable. It did not bother to even analyse the evidence and/or to refer to any findings recorded by the trial court as to in what way the evidence was not acceptable. The mere fact that the co-accused had been acquitted is not sufficient to discard the prosecution version in its totality.'' It further said ''It is not understood as to what was meant by the High Court by stating that there was no corroboration of investigation. This is not the way an appeal or reference for confirmation of death sentence is to be dealt with.'' The apex court also observed '' when the High Court was setting aside the order of conviction, the least that was required to be done was the analysis of the evidence to show as to how the conclusions of the trial court as regards acceptability of the evidence of any witnesss was erroneous. That apparently has not been done. Therefore, without expressing any opinion on the merits of the case, we set aside the impugned judgement of the High Court and remit the matter to it for fresh consideration.'' Govind Das, accused in the murder of two people-- Lok Nath and Nawal Kishore-- was awarded death sentence while two other accused were given life imprisonment with a fine of Rs 20000 each by the Additinal Sessions Judge, Hamirpur.

The order of the trial court was set aside and the High Court's judgement was challanged by the state of Uttar Pradesh in the Supreme Court. The apex court has allowed the appeal of the same.

UNI