Part of the Forensic Docket on Legal Desire Forensics — a case where forensic or identification evidence broke down on appeal.
The facts
Six persons were accused of raping a woman belonging to a Scheduled Caste, charged under Sections 452 and 323 read with Section 34 of the Penal Code together with the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
A Test Identification Parade was held involving the prosecutrix.
The courts below convicted five of the six accused, but also found that the parade had not been conducted in conformity with the requirements of law.
One of the convicted accused appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Court held that the appellant’s presence at the spot of occurrence, and his participation in the crime, had not been proved, and acquitted him.
Why this belongs in the Forensic Docket: A Test Identification Parade found non-compliant with legal requirements can unravel identification evidence even where other co-accused stand convicted on the same record — examiners should treat TIP procedure as a forensic safeguard that must itself be documented and defensible.
Case details
| Citation | [2008] 14 S.C.R. 1019 |
| Case number | Criminal Appeal No. 1660/2008 |
| Court | Indian Supreme Court |
| Decided | 2008-10-22 |
| 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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