TEAM HERALD
PANJIM: The High Court of Bombay at Goa has acquitted a Chennai-native who was convicted by the district court on charges of sodomy and murder.
Setting aside his conviction by the trial court, the High Court ordered that evidence on record is not sufficient to prove the guilt of the accused and that prosecution failed to prove facts linking the accused to the chain of events in the crime.
Principal district and sessions court had awarded life sentence to Shahul Hamid in 2011 for murdering M Dharmalingam after sodomising him on May 12, 2009 in an office at Ponda. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment for unnatural sex.
As per police charge sheet, the deceased was found half naked with a jute string around his neck and hands tied with a towel in the office. Both, the accused and the deceased, were working as labourers in a pipeline manufacturing industry at Borim village. Hamid then challenged the verdict in the High Court.
The bench presided over by Justices Naresh Patil and U V Bakre, in its order said, “The evidence on record is not sufficient to prove the guilt of the accused for the offences for which he has been charged. The impugned judgment of conviction rendered by the learned Sessions Judge, in our view, is not sustainable as the same is not in accordance with the settled principles of criminal jurisprudence. The accused is entitled to be acquitted.”
The bench also ordered that the accused is free as he is not required in any other case and that muddemal properties be dealt with in the manner as directed by the learned Sessions Judge in the impugned judgment.
