Just because the witness is victim’s relative, it is no ground to disbelieve, says Calcutta High Court

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Wednesday upheld the life term of a convict in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, whose body was found hanging from a mango orchard in Feb 2009, observing that just because a witness was the victim’s relative it was no ground to disbelieve them.The division bench of Justice Rajasekhar Mantha and Justice Anuj Singh directed the state to pay Rs 4 lakh to the victim’s parents, who “suffered as a result of the crime”, within seven days. The court said the state could recover the compensation amount from the convict.Yeasin Sk was convicted on May 20, 2015, and was sentenced to life for murder and 10 years for rape of the 11-year-old girl. The incident occurred on Feb 1, 2009, in Murshidabad, when the girl was on her way to her grandmother’s place. Yeasin kidnapped her, took her to a mango orchard on a bicycle, raped her and murdered her. Meanwhile, the victim’s parents did not search for her as they thought she had reached her grandmother’s house, while the grandmother thought she never left her parents’ home. It was the next morning that some persons, passing by the mango orchard, noticed the victim’s body hanging. They informed the victim’s father, who along with his wife and others, reached the orchard to find their daughter’s half-clad body hanging from the wooden ceiling of a tin shed.Two prosecution witnesses said they had seen the victim speak to Yeasin and another youth, Royal Sk, and charges were framed against both but the latter was acquitted.The victim’s grandmother claimed that one of the witnesses, Gobindo Sheikh, saw the victim being taken away by Yeasin on a red bicycle. The victim’s mother, too, said she had seen her daughter speaking to Yeasin at a tea stall. One of the witnesses, who saw the victim being dragged by the convict, told the parents later that he saw Yeasin take the sobbing child to the orchard.Yeasin’s lawyer’s case was that the two witnesses, who had said they had seen the convict take the child on a bicycle, had turned hostile. “The court must carefully scrutinise the evidence of a hostile witness before rejecting it. The retraction of a witness during a trial could be dealt with by scrutinising the evidence of other witnesses, who confirmed that the hostile witness previously shared the retracted facts with them,” it was submitted. But the division bench took into account the aspect of “economic and social factors” that could also cause a witness to resign from their previous statement. The court said the accused often frightened witnesses, forcing them to move away from the truth. So, a hostile witness’s evidence could not simply be discarded. The other argument was as the witnesses were closely related to the victim, they were interested witnesses. “A witness’s evidence cannot be brushed aside on the grounds that he is a relative of the victim… An interested witness is one who derives a benefit or settles personal scores from the conviction of an accused. A victim’s family member deposes about the assailant. Thus, a related witness cannot be conflated with an interested witness,” the bench noted.You Can Also Check: Gold Rate in Kolkata | Silver Rate in Kolkata | Bank Holidays in Kolkata | Public Holidays in Kolkata | Kolkata AQI | Weather in Kolkata | Petrol Price in Kolkata | Diesel Price in Kolkata | CNG Price in Kolkata | LPG Price in KolkataStay updated with the latest Kolkata news. Download the TOI App.