Part of the Forensic Docket on Legal Desire Forensics — a case where forensic or identification evidence broke down on appeal.
The facts
A newspaper published the accused’s name and photograph as responsible for the murder before any Test Identification Parade was held; the parade itself only took place ten days later.
The Court held the identification carried no real evidentiary weight once the witness had already seen the suspect’s face and name in the press, and gave the accused the benefit of doubt.
Why this belongs in the Forensic Docket: Media exposure before an identification parade is one of the most avoidable, most recurring ways to destroy an otherwise sound case.
Case details
| Citation | [2007] 5 S.C.R. 766 |
| Case number | Criminal Appeal No. 636/2007 |
| Court | Indian Supreme Court |
| Decided | 2007 |
| Module | Failure 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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