Friday, 20 September 2024
Friday, 20 September 2024
The RG Kar rape-murder case investigation took a new turn when the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested the medical college’s former principal Sandip Ghosh and Tala police station officer in-charge Abhijit Mondal on September 14.
The CBI has accused both of evidence tampering.
A number of criminal lawyers The Telegraph Online spoke with said this is how the guilty in such cases get away; tampering or mishandling of evidence results in cases remaining unsolved for years and eventually justice is never done.
Circumstantial evidence is a difficult premise to adjudicate on, the lawyers pointed out.
Both the Sheena Bora murder case in Maharashtra and the Arushi Talwar and Hemraj murder case in Noida garnered a lot of public attention. The investigations into both these cases were based on circumstantial evidence. Eventually, all the accused were let off.
“Law enforcement personnel play an important role in the issue of evidence tampering,” Srishti Oberoi, a civil and criminal Lawyer at the Yamunanagar district court and Punjab and Haryana high court, said. “They are either ignorant or just too careless to document the evidence properly. Contamination ultimately leads to crucial pieces of evidence being altered or missing.”
Evidence tampering, criminal lawyers said, happens in many investigations. The judiciary is left to deal with circumstantial evidence and unanswered questions.
“If one were to ask ‘how to get away with murder’, especially in a nation like India, the simple answer would be evidence tampering. I have seen perpetrators get away with the most heinous atrocities due to evidence tampering,” said Ayush Jindal, an advocate who practises in the Supreme Court and the Delhi high court.
In the Sheena Bora case, despite years of custody and multiple appeals, Indrani Mukerjea was granted bail in 2022 because the circumstantial evidence against her did not make it a watertight argument in front of the courts.
“In the Sheena Bora case, ambiguous forensic evidence and conflicting testimonies led to a disgraceful lapse of justice,” Jindal said.
Sana Raees Khan, Indrani Mukerjea’s lawyer in the Sheena Bora case, said: “The prosecution heavily relied on circumstantial evidence, which can be less compelling in establishing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This gap makes it difficult to secure a conviction. Prolonged investigations and legal proceedings often lead to a deterioration of evidence and witness reliability, hindering the pursuit of justice.”
Aarushi Talwar, a young girl, was murdered in her bedroom in Noida in 2008. A domestic help in her house, Hemraj Banjade, was also found murdered. No one could be punished for the killings. Key forensic evidence was lost early in the investigation.
The police said Aarushi's parents, Dr Rajesh Talwar and Dr Nupur Talwar, were the prime suspects. The case was transferred to the CBI, which suspected the Talwars' assistant Krishna Thadarai and two domestic helps. All three were released for lack of evidence. Then a new CBI team took over the case and accused the parents again. In November 2013, the parents were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Allahabad high court acquitted them in 2017.
“Right from the start, the crowd gathering inside the house, police's attempt to vacate the place all resulted in the contamination of the crime scene,” advocate Oberoi, who had followed the Arushi case closely, said.
“Late arrival of forensics is another major development in the case. Significant evidence around the body, traces of semen/saliva were not documented properly. In my personal opinion the alleged murder weapon was intentionally planted to point towards the father as a culprit,” Oberoi added.
Mayank Rohilla, an advocate practising in Punjab And Haryana high court, Rohtak session court and Gurugram session court, agreed that evidence tampering and mishandling had botched up the investigation in the Arushi case.
“A purple pillow cover with Hemraj's DNA, bloodstains suggesting his body was dragged, a fingerprint-less whisky bottle, and inconsistent router activity all raised questions. These crucial pieces of evidence, if properly collected and preserved, could have solved the case.” Rohilla said.
He said that in another case of rape that he fought as the prosecution lawyer, “meticulous forensic work made all the difference. Fingerprints, hair samples and blood stains were carefully collected, leading to the perpetrator's life sentence.”
Contamination of the crime scene is a major worry for the CBI in the RG Kar case as well. In repeated hearings, the CBI’s lawyers have pointed to the five-day gap in their taking over the investigation.
The Kolkata Police have denied that the crime scene was not protected, even though there are enough and more photographs to show a crowd of people inside the seminar room where the postgraduate intern doctor’s body was found.
The 2013 Vyapam scam, a recruitment test fraud in Madhya Pradesh, led to 40 mysterious deaths. The state’s former higher education minister Laxmikant Sharma and six others were let off by the CBI due to lack of sufficient evidence. While an entire scam unravelled, some walked free because the evidence was either tampered with or not enough to convict.
“The Vyapam Scam brought out the systematic evidence tampering, all with the disappearances of witnesses, unexplained deaths and compromised documentary evidence,” said advocate Ayush Jindal. “Whether it was tampering with digital records, removing key documents, erasing or coercing witness testimonies, no stone was left unturned to eradicate evidence and deny justice.”
The CBI has had its fair share of struggles with unsolved cases, primarily because of mishandling, tampering, or simply losing evidence.
“In India, we follow two primary rules. One is that to convict, the proof must be beyond reasonable doubt. The other is that we have a rule in our evidence statute called the best evidence rule,” said advocate Ajay Kumar, partner, Triumvir Law.
“When something is presented as evidence, the law prefers the best form of it. The best evidence of a document is the document itself, for example.
“The problem is, by the time evidence tampering comes to light, the accused often walks free, benefiting from that very doubt,” Kumar added. “Our laws need to be stricter, not just on false evidence leading to convictions, but also on tampering that leads to acquittals.”
