7 men attacked a couple in their field. The High Court let them off with time served. Then the Supreme Court stepped in.

She was attacked with an axe. Her husband was killed. The High Court said her testimony had 'contradictions' and let six men walk free.

She watched her husband die. On 22 May 2001, Rami and her husband Chandernath were working in their agricultural field in Nagaur, Rajasthan, when seven men from a neighbouring family came at them with axes, shovels, and sticks. Chandernath took a fatal blow to the head and died on the way to the hospital. Rami was grievously injured. She survived. She saw everything. And when she told the court what she saw, the Rajasthan High Court decided she wasn't believable enough.

The question the Supreme Court had to answer was simple: Can a judge throw out an injured eyewitness's entire testimony just because her police statement didn't match her court testimony on every single detail?

When the axe fell

The attack happened in broad daylight. Chandernath and Rami were in their agricultural field when the accused arrived, armed and outnumbered. The Trial Court at Nagaur convicted all six chargesheeted accused of murder and attempt to murder, sentencing each to life imprisonment. The Trial Court believed Rami's testimony. It found the medical evidence consistent with her account — the fatal head injury, the grievous wounds on her own body. It saw no reason to doubt a woman who had been attacked alongside her husband. The Sessions Court, Nagaur, had before it the full weight of the FIR lodged at Police Station Pachori at about 3:00 PM on the day of the attack, and it accepted the prosecution's case in its entirety.

Then the case reached the Rajasthan High Court. The stack of case files grew thicker on the judges' desks. The courtroom fell silent as arguments were heard.

What the High Court did

The High Court reversed the convictions for murder and attempt to murder. It convicted the accused only of rioting and minor hurt offences, reducing their sentences to time already served — meaning they walked free. The reasoning: Rami's testimony had "contradictions." Her statement to the police under Section 161 CrPC (the police's power to question witnesses during investigation) didn't perfectly match what she said in court during her examination-in-chief (the main questioning by the prosecution). The High Court treated these discrepancies as fatal to her credibility.

The High Court also gave weight to defence medical evidence suggesting the accused had injuries, which the defence argued meant there was a free fight — a mutual brawl rather than a one-sided attack. The Trial Court had already discredited that medical evidence, finding it unreliable. The High Court revived it, using it to cast doubt on Rami's account. The judge adjusted his glasses, scanning the medical reports one more time before delivering the order on 8 August 2007, in Criminal Appeal No. 976 of 2002.

Why the Supreme Court stepped in

Birbal Nath, the complainant, and the State of Rajasthan appealed. The Supreme Court bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia took up the case in October 2023. What they found was a fundamental error in how the High Court had treated an injured witness.

The Supreme Court held that the High Court erred in law by treating minor contradictions in Rami's previous police statement as sufficient to discredit her entire testimony. The court cited three key precedents: Rammi v. State of M.P. — (1999) 8 SCC 649; Tahsildar Singh v. State of U.P. — AIR 1959 SC 1012; and State of M.P. v. Mansingh and Others — (2003) 10 SCC 414.

The silence in the Supreme Court courtroom was heavy as the bench read out its reasoning. The weight of the law pressed down on every word. The case files — Criminal Appeal No. 1587 of 2008 with Criminal Appeal No. 1588 of 2008 — lay open on the desks, their pages marked with the procedural journey that had begun more than two decades earlier in a dusty field in Nagaur.

The law on police statements

Here's the legal principle the Supreme Court clarified. A statement given to the police under Section 161 CrPC cannot be used as evidence in court. It can only be used under Section 145 of the Evidence Act to contradict a witness — to show they said something different earlier. But not every difference counts as a contradiction that destroys credibility. Only an inconsistency that is "liable to be contradicted" under Section 155(3) of the Evidence Act can impeach a witness's credit. The Supreme Court drew on Tahsildar Singh v. State of U.P. to explain that a contradiction must be material — it must relate to a fact that the witness was expected to remember and that is relevant to the core of the case.

The Supreme Court said the High Court forgot something crucial: Rami was a rural woman, not a trained witness. Her social background, her degree of articulation, and the surrounding circumstances of the attack all matter when evaluating her credibility. A woman who just watched her husband get killed and was herself attacked with an axe cannot be expected to give a perfectly consistent account months apart. The court applied the principle from Rammi v. State of M.P., which held that the testimony of an injured witness is entitled to great weight and cannot be discarded lightly.

As the Supreme Court stated in its judgment: "The testimony of an injured eyewitness carries special evidentiary value and cannot be discredited merely on the basis of minor discrepancies between the witness's statement under Section 161 CrPC and examination-in-chief. The rural social background, degree of articulation, and surrounding circumstances of such a witness must be considered while evaluating credibility."

The court also rejected the High Court's reliance on the defence medical evidence, which the Trial Court had already discredited. The Supreme Court noted that the High Court had given undue weight to evidence that had been properly evaluated and found unreliable by the Trial Court, citing State of M.P. v. Mansingh and Others for the proposition that appellate courts should not lightly disturb findings of fact based on credibility of witnesses.

The benefit of doubt — but only on premeditation

However, the Supreme Court found one area where the contradictions created reasonable doubt: premeditation. The court accepted that there was some doubt about whether the attack was planned in advance. The minor inconsistencies in Rami's account, while not enough to discard her entire testimony, were sufficient to raise a question about whether the accused had come with a premeditated design to kill. This meant the case fell under Exception 4 to Section 300 IPC (the provision defining murder) — a sudden fight without premeditation, in the heat of passion, without the accused having taken undue advantage or acted in a cruel or unusual manner.

So the court converted the murder conviction under Section 302 IPC to culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 Part I IPC. Similarly, the attempt to murder charge under Section 307 IPC was converted to attempt to commit culpable homicide under Section 308 IPC. The Supreme Court thus gave the accused a limited benefit of doubt — not on whether they had attacked and killed Chandernath, but on whether they had planned to do so beforehand.

Seven years — not life, not freedom

Each accused was sentenced to seven years of rigorous imprisonment under Section 304 Part I and three years under Section 308. The remaining convictions for rioting and other offences under Sections 147, 148, and 149 IPC were left undisturbed. The sentences would run concurrently (at the same time), and the time already served would be adjusted. The accused were ordered to surrender within four weeks of the judgment.

The case against one accused, Jethnath, was abated due to his death during the pendency of the appeal.

The procedural journey of this case began with an FIR lodged at Police Station Pachori, District Nagaur, Rajasthan, at about 3:00 PM on 22 May 2001. The Trial Court at Sessions Court, Nagaur, convicted all accused. The Rajasthan High Court partly allowed the appeal (Criminal Appeal No. 976 of 2002) on 8 August 2007, acquitting the accused under Sections 302 and 307 IPC. The Supreme Court, in Criminal Appeal No. 1587 of 2008 with Criminal Appeal No. 1588 of 2008, delivered its judgment on 30 October 2023, setting aside the High Court order and restoring convictions under the modified provisions.

THE PLAY: When you defend a criminal appeal, never ask a court to discard an injured eyewitness's testimony solely on minor contradictions between their police statement and court testimony — the Supreme Court has now made clear that approach is legally unsound.

The Supreme Court ended where it began: with a woman in a field, an axe, and a testimony that deserved to be heard.