Bhaiyamiyan @ Jardar Khan & Anr. v. State of Madhya Pradesh — Medical examination, no injury found / delayed FIR

Part of the Forensic Docket on Legal Desire Forensics — a case where forensic or identification evidence broke down on appeal.

The facts

The case involved an allegation of gang rape under Section 376(2)(g) of the Penal Code.

The First Information Report was lodged some sixty hours after the incident, and at a police station roughly twenty-two kilometres from the place of occurrence, even though a police station only about seven kilometres away was available.

The prosecutrix was medically examined at a different hospital after she refused to be examined at the place where the FIR was lodged, and the medical evidence that emerged from that examination found no injury on her person and no evidence of rape.

Faced with this combination of the long, unexplained delay in lodging the FIR at a distant police station and the medical findings that did not support the allegation, the trial court held the prosecution’s case doubtful and acquitted the accused.

The High Court had taken a different view and convicted, but on appeal the Supreme Court restored the trial court’s assessment, allowing the appeal in the accused’s favour.

Why this belongs in the Forensic Docket: A medical examination that finds no injury and no evidence of rape is not a minor footnote — combined with an unexplained delay in reporting to a farther police station, it can be enough to make a rape allegation legally doubtful, however serious the charge.

Case details

Read the full judgment (PDF), sourced from the Indian Supreme Court Judgments open dataset (AWS Open Data Registry, CC-BY-4.0).

Explore more in the Forensic Docket or browse the full Forensics hub.