Part of the Forensic Docket on Legal Desire Forensics — a conviction confirmed through final appeal, kept here as a method-of-crime record.
The facts
The accused was convicted of dacoity under Section 395 IPC and sentenced to five years’ rigorous imprisonment, a conviction upheld by the courts below on the basis of identification evidence.
The Supreme Court explained the evidentiary role of a test identification parade under Section 9 of the Evidence Act: it belongs to the investigation stage, and its purpose is to test and strengthen the trustworthiness of a witness’s substantive evidence given in court, rather than to itself constitute substantive evidence.
The Court held that identification-parade evidence may be relied upon provided the necessary precautions are ensured, and that on the facts, the identification of the accused was established by the substantive evidence, justifying the conviction.
Status: conviction upheld through final appeal.
Why this belongs in the Forensic Docket: A textbook statement of what a TIP is actually for — corroborating, not substituting for, courtroom identification — that examiners and investigators conducting parades should keep in mind so the procedure is not mistaken for standalone proof of guilt.
Case details
| Citation | [2010] 4 S.C.R. 771 |
| Case number | Criminal Appeal No. 475/2008 |
| Court | Indian Supreme Court |
| Decided | 2010-04-19 |
| Module | MO Archive |
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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