He reported a robbery. Then his cashier died in police custody. Now the Supreme Court says —
The man who filed the FIR was charged with murder and conspiracy. But the top court found zero material linking him to any plot. Here's why the charge collapsed.
Discharged.
After sixteen years.
No conspiracy found.
The man who filed the FIR was charged with murder and conspiracy. But the top court found zero material linking him to any plot. Here's why the charge collapsed.
Ram Prakash Chadha went to the police to report a robbery. Instead, his cashier was tortured to death in custody. Then the cops charged Chadha with murder.
On a July morning in 1993, a wood business owner walked into a police station in Modi Nagar, Ghaziabad. He wanted to report a robbery. By the end of that month, his cashier was dead in a hospital bed, two police officers were accused of torture, and Chadha himself was facing a murder charge. The Supreme Court would need to examine the entire case file to explain why that charge should never have survived the first hearing.
When the money bag vanished
Ram Prakash Chadha ran a wood business. His cashier, Ram Kishore, and another employee had gone out to collect business proceeds. On their way back, someone allegedly snatched the money bag at gunpoint. Chadha did what any business owner would do — he filed a robbery complaint. The police registered Crime No. 351 of 1993 and began investigating.
But the investigation took a strange turn. The police decided the robbery complaint was false. Chadha then brought Ram Kishore to the police station for inquiry. What happened next would transform a routine property crime into a custodial death case.
Six days in police custody
The police illegally detained Ram Kishore from 17 July to 23 July 1993. During those six days, they tortured him during interrogation. On 24 July 1993, Ram Kishore died in hospital. A new FIR — Crime No. 371 of 1993 — was registered for custodial death.
The investigation was handed to the CBCID (the Criminal Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department, a specialised state police unit). In February 2000, the CBCID filed a chargesheet against three people: two police officers and Ram Prakash Chadha. Chadha was arraigned as Accused No. 3 under Sections 302 (murder), 343 (wrongful confinement for three or more days), 217 and 218 (public servant disobeying law with intent to save a person from punishment), 330 (voluntarily causing hurt to extort confession), 120B (criminal conspiracy — an agreement between two or more persons to commit an illegal act), and 34 (common intention — when several people act together with a shared criminal purpose) of the Indian Penal Code.
Chadha had gone to the police as a complainant. He was now standing in the dock as a co-accused in a murder case.
The discharge application that failed twice
Chadha filed an application under Section 227 of the CrPC (the provision that allows an accused person to ask a trial court to drop the charges if the prosecution's own documents show no case against them). He argued that there was zero material linking him to any conspiracy or torture. He had reported the robbery. He had brought his cashier to the station for inquiry. Nothing in the police documents suggested he had agreed with the officers to torture Ram Kishore or cause his death.
The Additional Sessions Judge in Ghaziabad rejected the application on 19 April 2007. The judge found "strong suspicion" against Chadha. Chadha then approached the Allahabad High Court under Section 482 of the CrPC (the High Court's inherent power to prevent abuse of its process or secure the ends of justice). The High Court dismissed his petition on 21 April 2023. Both courts had refused to discharge him, and the case was set to go to trial.
What the Supreme Court found in the file
The Supreme Court bench — Justice C.T. Ravikumar and Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia — did something the lower courts had not. They actually examined the record of the case and the documents submitted with the chargesheet. What they found was an "absolute absence" of any material showing an agreement or meeting of minds between Chadha and the police officers.
The court noted that for criminal conspiracy to stick under Section 120A IPC, the prosecution must show that two or more persons agreed to do an illegal act. That agreement — the meeting of minds — is the core of the offence. Without it, the charge of conspiracy collapses. The same logic applied to Section 34 IPC (common intention), which requires a shared criminal purpose that all accused persons acted upon.
The prosecution's chargesheet mentioned the words "criminal conspiracy" and "common intention". But the documents attached to the chargesheet contained nothing that suggested Chadha had conspired with the officers to torture his own cashier. The trial court's "strong suspicion" was based on suppositions — guesses that had no support in the prosecution's own material.
Why suspicion is not enough
The Supreme Court drew a sharp line. At the stage of Section 227 CrPC, a court cannot frame charges based on suspicion alone. The suspicion must emerge from the prosecution's own documents. If the documents show no agreement between the accused and the co-accused, the mere use of the phrase "criminal conspiracy" in the chargesheet is not enough to send a person to trial.
The court cited its own precedent in Yogesh alias Sachin Jagadish Joshi v. State of Maharashtra (AIR 2008 SC 2991), where it had held that a court finding suspicion based on circumstances the prosecution itself does not allege as incriminating exceeds the permissible scope of Section 227 CrPC. In simpler terms: a judge cannot invent a theory of conspiracy that the police never put forward.
The bench also relied on State of Orissa v. Debendra Nath Padhi (2005) and State of Tamil Nadu v. N Suresh Rajan (2014), both of which established that at the discharge stage, the court must evaluate whether the prosecution's own material makes out a prima facie (at first glance) case against the accused. If it does not, the accused must be discharged.
Additional precedents cited by the court included P. Vijayan v. State of Kerala and Anr. (2010), Stree Atyachar Virodhi Parishad v. Dilip Nathumal Chordia & Anr. (1989), Om Parkash Sharma v. CBI (2000), and R. Venkatakrishnan v. CBI (2009) — all reinforcing the principle that a court cannot proceed against an accused without foundational material from the prosecution's own documents.
The missing reasons
The Supreme Court found another problem with the trial court's order. When a judge rejects a discharge application under Section 227 CrPC, they must give reasons for finding sufficient ground to proceed against the accused. The trial court had not done this properly. Its order was based on "suppositions, suspicions and conjectures" — not on material available in the case file. The High Court, in turn, had upheld this order without correcting the error.
The Supreme Court was blunt: a court that does not disclose its reasons for rejecting a discharge application makes it impossible for a superior court to examine whether the rejection was correct. This is not a technical formality. It is a safeguard built into the criminal justice system.
What this means for every accused person
This judgment is a reminder that the right to a fair trial begins long before the trial itself. The discharge stage under Section 227 CrPC is not a rubber-stamping exercise. It is the court's first real opportunity to filter out cases where the prosecution's own documents fail to make out a case. A judge who frames charges on suspicion alone — without material linking the accused to the alleged crime — violates the accused's right to life and personal liberty under Article 21 of the Constitution.
For practitioners, the takeaway is clear: when you file a discharge application, the court must examine the prosecution's documents, not the prosecution's labels. If the documents show no agreement, no meeting of minds, and no shared criminal purpose, the charge of conspiracy must fall — regardless of what the chargesheet says.
THE PLAY: At the Section 227 CrPC stage, if the prosecution's own documents contain zero material showing an agreement between your client and the co-accused, the charge of criminal conspiracy cannot survive — even if the chargesheet uses the words "criminal conspiracy" a hundred times.
The Supreme Court allowed Chadha's appeal, set aside the orders of the trial court and the High Court, and discharged him from all charges. He walked out of a case that had hung over his head for 31 years — not because he was innocent, but because the prosecution had never shown he was guilty.
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