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Mahendra Pratap Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh — Eyewitness account vs. medical and ballistic evidence

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

The facts

The trial court had acquitted the accused; the High Court convicted him.

The Supreme Court found the eyewitness and injured-witness accounts inconsistent with both the medical evidence and the ballistic expert’s report on the weapon of offence, and held the High Court had disregarded the rule of prudence in converting an acquittal into a conviction on that record.

Why this belongs in the Forensic Docket: Two independent forensic disciplines disagreeing with the eyewitnesses at once is a strong signal the theory of the crime needs to be revisited, not overridden.

Case details

Citation[2009] 2 S.C.R. 1033
Case numberCriminal Appeal No. 34/2006
CourtIndian Supreme Court
Decided2009
ModuleFailure Registry

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.

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