Ramnaresh & Ors. v. State of Chhattisgarh — Medical evidence corroborating sole witness (gang rape-murder)

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

Four accused were convicted under Sections 302, 376(2)(g) and 499 of the Penal Code for the gang rape and murder of the victim, and sentenced to death, on the strength of the testimony of PW-6.

Before the Supreme Court, the accused challenged that conviction, but the Court found no contradiction at all in PW-6’s testimony, and held that his account was fully corroborated by the medical evidence on record — both the external and the internal injuries recorded on examination supported the version he gave of what had happened.

With the eyewitness account and the medical findings aligning so closely, the Supreme Court affirmed that the conviction rested on a sound evidentiary foundation, disposing of the appeal by partly allowing it, which on the facts pertained to a question of sentence rather than to guilt itself.

Status: conviction upheld through final appeal.

Why this belongs in the Forensic Docket: When medical findings and eyewitness testimony line up point for point, that is exactly the kind of corroboration a conviction should be built on — treat it as a model MO record, not a cautionary tale.

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.