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Residue evidence enough to convict an accused: apex court

New Delhi: Even if a major portion of evidence is deficient, and in case residue evidence is sufficient to prove the guilt of an accused, courts can record his conviction, the Supreme Court has held.

“It is the duty of the court to separate the grain from the chaff. Where the chaff can be separated from the grain, it will be open to the court to convict an accused notwithstanding the fact that evidence has been found to be deficient or not wholly credible,” said a Bench consisting of Justices Arijit Pasayat and Mukundakam Sharma.

“Falsity of material particular would not ruin it from the beginning to end. The maxim falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (false in one thing, false in everything) has no application in India and the witness cannot be branded a liar. This maxim has not received general acceptance, nor has it come to occupy the status of rule of law. It is merely a rule of caution. All that it amounts to is that in such cases testimony may be disregarded, and not that it must be disregarded.”

Writing the judgment, Mr. Justice Pasayat said: “The doctrine merely involves the question of weight of evidence which a court may apply in a given set of circumstances, but it is not what may be called a mandatory rule of evidence. The doctrine is a dangerous one specially in India for, if a whole body of the testimony were to be rejected, because witness was evidently speaking an untruth in some aspect, it is to be feared that administration of criminal justice would come to a dead-stop.”

The Bench noted that this dictum “is not a sound rule for the reason that one hardly comes across a witness whose evidence does not contain a grain of untruth or at any rate exaggeration, embroideries or embellishment.”

Courts must differentiate between normal and material discrepancies in evidence. “Normal discrepancies are those which are due to normal errors of observation, normal errors of memory due to lapse of time, due to mental disposition such as shock and horror at the time of occurrence and those are always there, however honest and truthful a witness may be. While normal discrepancies do not corrode the credibility of a party’s case, material discrepancies do, as they are not expected of a normal person,” it said.

In the instant case, in a feud between two political parties, two persons were killed. Fifty-seven people were cited as accused. The Sessions Judge, Vizianagaram, convicted and sentenced 11 of them to life imprisonment and acquitted the others. On appeal, the Andhra Pradesh High Court confirmed the conviction and the life sentence.

In their appeal against this judgment, Gunnana Pentayya alias Pentadu and 10 others cited the principle of ‘false in one thing, false in everything’ and contended that non-acceptance of the evidence of the prosecution witness to a large extent was a ground for throwing out the entire prosecution case.

The apex court rejected the contention and dismissed the appeal.

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