SC says call records alone not cogent proof, clears woman of husband’s murder
Nearly two decades after a banker was found dead and investigators accused his wife of plotting the crime with her purported lover, the Supreme Court
Nearly two decades after a banker was found dead and investigators accused his wife of plotting the crime with her purported lover, the Supreme Court has exonerated the woman, holding that the mere production of telephone call records cannot substitute the “substantive proof” required to sustain a conviction for murder. A Bench comprising Justices Sanjay Karol and Prasanna B. Varale upheld the acquittal of Monika Kiran Suryawanshi, declining to revive the charges of murder and criminal conspiracy against her. She had been accused of orchestrating the murder of her husband, Kiran Suryawanshi, a bank employee, in February 2007 over an alleged extramarital affair. ‘Motive is weak’ “Mere production of telephone records does not substitute substantive proof of an illicit affair leading to murder. Thus, the motive is inherently weak and insufficient to anchor a conviction for murder,” the Bench observed while dismissing appeals filed by the Maharashtra government against the Bombay High Court’s 2010 judgment acquitting the accused. According to the prosecution, Monika, who had married Kiran in 2001, was allegedly involved in an extramarital relationship with her neighbour, Prakash. It was alleged that the two, along with another associate, conspired to murder Kiran. The prosecution claimed that Monika first administered sedatives to her husband in the form of tablets and injections before he was fatally assaulted with a grinding stone inside the couple’s residence.
The prosecution further alleged that the body was wrapped in plastic and a bedsheet before being transported on a motorcycle for disposal. The alleged attempt to dispose of the body was thwarted when a police constable on patrol noticed two men carrying a suspicious bundle on a motorcycle. On closer inspection, the constable spotted a human foot protruding from the bundle, leading to the recovery of Kiran’s body and the immediate arrest of the two men. In 2008, a sessions court convicted Monika and the two co-accused of murder and sentenced them to imprisonment for life. The Bombay High Court, however, set aside the conviction in 2010, holding that the circumstantial evidence relied upon by the prosecution was too weak to uphold a murder conviction. ‘No cogent evidence’ The judgment, authored by Justice Varale, observed that, “at its highest”, the prosecution’s evidence merely suggested “a one-sided infatuation” on the part of the co-accused. There was “no cogent evidence”, the court noted, to show that Monika reciprocated those feelings or harboured any hostility towards her husband. The court also poked holes in the prosecution’s reliance on the call records to establish Monika’s alleged role in the conspiracy. While the prosecution claimed that Monika had telephoned Prakash after ensuring her husband had fallen asleep, the Bench noted a “total absence of any outgoing call” from Monika’s mobile phone to Prakash’s on the night of the incident.
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