Pankaj Singh was alone in a conspiracy with no one left to conspire with.

One man, one conspiracy, zero co-accused: Why the Supreme Court freed Pankaj Singh

When Maghavendra Pratap Singh @ Pankaj Singh was convicted for the murder of businessman Goverdhan Aggarwal, he was one of seven accused. The trial court in Ambikapur, Chhattisgarh, sentenced him to life. The High Court of Chhattisgarh at Bilaspur then did something unusual: it acquitted every single one of his co-accused—Satish Tripathi, Ganesh Datt Mishra, Mannu Singh, Sunil Paswan—but upheld Pankaj Singh's conviction alone. That left one man, convicted for a murder the prosecution said was the result of a criminal conspiracy, with no one left to have conspired with. On April 24, 2023, a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India—Justice Sanjay Karol and Justice B.R. Gavai—asked the obvious question: can a single person be convicted of criminal conspiracy? The answer, delivered in Criminal Appeal No. 915 of 2016, was a decisive no.

The shooting on a September evening

Goverdhan Aggarwal was a businessman in Ambikapur. On September 26, 2009, two men on a motorcycle shot him dead. The prosecution alleged that Pankaj Singh and his co-accused had been extorting money from Aggarwal, and when he refused to pay, they conspired to kill him. Seven persons were charged. The trial court—the First Additional Sessions Judge, Ambikapur, District Sarguja—convicted six and acquitted one (Akhileshwar Pratap Singh) on March 25, 2013. Pankaj Singh was convicted under Section 302 (murder) and Section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, and Section 25(1)(1-b)(a) of the Arms Act, 1959.

The High Court, hearing the appeal as the first appellate court, delivered its judgment on January 14, 2016. It acquitted all four other co-accused—Satish Tripathi, Ganesh Datt Mishra, Mannu Singh, and Sunil Paswan. But it confirmed Pankaj Singh's conviction and sentence. That was the anomaly the Supreme Court would eventually correct.

What the prosecution actually had

The prosecution's case against Pankaj Singh was entirely circumstantial. There was no eyewitness to the shooting. The key piece of evidence was a disclosure statement allegedly made by Pankaj Singh while in police custody, which led to the recovery of a country-made pistol and cartridges from the house of a co-accused—who had already been acquitted. That was it. No forensic link. No direct evidence. No witness placing him at the scene.

The Supreme Court, in its judgment authored by Justice Sanjay Karol, found the investigation riddled with infirmities. The Investigating Officer (IO) admitted that the memos of arrest, recovery, and disclosure were not prepared by him. Independent witnesses who were supposed to have witnessed the recoveries turned hostile, stating they had signed blank papers. The case diaries required under Section 172 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 were not maintained. The ballistic expert who could have linked the recovered weapon to the crime was never examined.

The witness rule the Supreme Court applied

The Bench began by reaffirming the standard for circumstantial evidence cases, citing Vijay Shankar v. State of Haryana (2015) 12 SCC 644, which itself drew from the five golden principles (the "Panchsheel") laid down in Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra (1984) 4 SCC 116. The rule is simple: circumstances must be cogently established, must point unerringly to guilt, must form a complete chain, and must be incapable of explanation on any hypothesis other than guilt. The standard is certainty, not probability.

The Court found that the prosecution's evidence did not meet this standard. The disclosure statement and recovery were the only circumstantial links, and they were fatally weakened by the IO's own admissions and the hostile witnesses. As the Bench observed, "a few bits here and there on which prosecution relies cannot be held adequate for connecting the accused with criminal conspiracy," citing Parveen v. State of Haryana (2021 SCC OnLine SC 1184).

Why the conspiracy charge collapsed

The most critical legal point in the judgment concerns Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code—criminal conspiracy. The Bench held that when all co-accused are acquitted, the charge of criminal conspiracy against the sole remaining accused cannot be sustained. The fundamental requirement of Section 120B is that two or more persons agree to do an illegal act. A single person cannot hatch a conspiracy with himself.

The High Court had failed to address this. It had acquitted all co-accused but still convicted Pankaj Singh for conspiracy. The Supreme Court, citing Geeta Devi v. State of U.P. & Ors. (2022 SCC OnLine 57), reminded the High Court that as the first appellate court, it was duty-bound to re-appreciate and discuss the evidence on record. It had not done so. The conspiracy charge, the Bench held, could not stand.

THE PLAY: When all co-accused are acquitted, a conviction for criminal conspiracy under Section 120B IPC against the sole remaining accused cannot survive—a single person cannot conspire alone.

The investigation that failed the test

The Supreme Court did not stop at the conspiracy point. It went on to deliver a scathing critique of the investigation, citing multiple precedents on the duties of an Investigating Officer. The Court referred to Common Cause v. Union of India (2015) 6 SCC 332, which held that a "very high degree of responsibility" is placed on the investigating agency to ensure that an innocent person is not subjected to a criminal trial. The Court also underlined that investigation is both a statutory duty under Chapter XII of the CrPC and a constitutional obligation.

The Court found multiple violations: the IO failed to comply with the guidelines in D.K. Basu v. State of WB (1997) 1 SCC 416 by not informing the family members of arrested accused persons; the case diary under Section 172 CrPC was not maintained; the IO admitted he did not prepare the memos himself; and local witnesses were not associated with the investigation. The Bench observed that these infirmities rendered the investigation unreliable and the prosecution case based on it could not sustain a conviction.

What this means for practitioners

This judgment is a masterclass in how to challenge a conviction based on circumstantial evidence and a shoddy investigation. For defence counsel, the playbook is clear: attack the IO's compliance with Chapter XII CrPC, highlight the failure to maintain case diaries, and point out the absence of independent witnesses. For prosecutors, the message is equally stark: a conviction cannot survive if the investigation is fundamentally flawed, no matter how serious the crime.

The judgment also reinforces a critical procedural point: the High Court, as the first appellate court in a criminal appeal from a trial court, must independently re-appreciate the evidence. It cannot simply rubber-stamp the trial court's findings. The failure to do so, as happened here, invites reversal by the Supreme Court.

The bottom line

The Supreme Court set aside the High Court judgment dated January 14, 2016, allowed the appeal, and directed that Pankaj Singh be set at liberty forthwith if not already released. The operative order is clear: a conviction built on a conspiracy that no longer exists, supported by an investigation that failed every statutory and procedural test, cannot stand.

For every advocate, CFO, and founder reading this: the lesson is simple. When the state's case rests on a chain of circumstances, every link must be forged with procedural integrity. Break one link—a missing case diary, a hostile witness, an IO who didn't prepare the memos—and the entire chain falls. The Supreme Court just showed you how.