In one of the most sensational developments in the annals of the state’s judicial history, arguably unprecedented in recent memory, the Calcutta High Court acquitted a death sentenced convict in the horrific Kamduni rape and murder case on grounds of want of evidence.

Three other convicts, sentenced for life by the trial court, were also allowed to walk after the High Court remitted their sentences to 10 years of imprisonment which they have already served.

The High Court also commuted the death sentences of two other prime convicts in the case to that of life sentences.

The verdict was delivered by the Division Bench of Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Ajay Kumar Gupta after an extensive hearing which took place over a period of nearly seven years and upon perusal of evidence and documents placed before the court by the investigators including the charge sheets filed and statements of witnesses.

The reversal of sentences not only pointed towards the possible glaring loopholes which the investigating agency, the state CID, may have left open while probing one of the most nerve-numbing crimes in the state that created a major political dust up a decade ago, it also raised questions on the judicial exercise undertaken by the trial court.

Few legal minds could explain the paradox of a lower court finding an accused complicit in a crime most foul so much so that it sentences the convict to death, when the same accused is found to be totally unrelated to the crime by a higher court and sets him free.

While previously death-sentenced Amin Ali was acquitted by the High Court, the death sentences of Saiful Ali and Ansar Ali were commuted to rigorous life imprisonment for the reminder of their natural lives. The punishment of the earlier life-sentenced convicts Aminur Islam, Sk Emanul Islam, and Bholanath Naskar were remitted by the Bench to 10 years of imprisonment and bonds of Rs 10,000 each. Since all three have already served those sentences, they too would walk.

Deeply disappointed with the verdict, the victims relatives broke down at the court premises. “We will move the Supreme Court. We will go to Delhi, plead before the President if needed. But we will not give up. We will fight till the last drop of blood in our body to seek justice for my sister,” the victim’s brother, while weeping inconsolably, said.

Two of the most prominent civil protestors from Kamduni, Mousumi and Tumpa Kayal, were also devastated by the court outcome. “Chief minister Mamata Banerjee promised us quick justice and exemplary punishment for the prepertarors. She failed to keep her word on both counts. The right punishment may have ensured that such crimes don’t get repeated in our state. The government lawyers have sold themselves out,” a wailing Mousumi alleged outside court premises.

On the rain-drenched afternoon of June 7, 2013, barely months after the gut wrenching Nirbhaya incident in Delhi, the 20-year old student of the Derozio College in Rajarhat was gangraped and murdered in an abandoned plot outside Kamduni village when she was returning home from her college. While the gang rape and murder took place inside a boundary-wall-covered plot, the body was later dragged through a hole in the boundary wall and dumped on an adjacent high ground in the middle of a water body.

The victim’s body, recovered by neighbours and relatives with clothes torn, had gruesome injury marks on the face and displayed evident signs of sexual assault. The autopsy report of the victim confirmed that she was raped and subsequently smothered to death.

“In a case based on circumstantial evidence, prosecution may rely on false explanation by an accused as an additional link only after marshalling other incriminating circumstances a reasonable inference of guilt is made out. Prosecution must stand on its own leg and not on the weakness of the defence,” the two-judge Bench stated in its 92-page verdict, while calling out the investigation loopholes of accused Amin Ali.

“Unlike Ansar there is no convincing evidence with regard to the presence and participation of Amin Ali in the crime,” the order further stated.

“It’s a historic verdict,” said Feroze Edulji, defense counsel. “I cannot comment on the course of trial at the lower court but I believe justice was delivered as regards my clients and their true role in the crime,” he added.