Introduction:

The Supreme Court has held that unexplained delay by a material witness in disclosing an incriminating circumstance against an accused can seriously undermine the credibility of his subsequent testimony. The Court observed that where a witness claims to have witnessed or possessed knowledge of a grave circumstance connected with a murder, but fails to disclose it despite having an immediate opportunity to do so, the subsequent disclosure may lose significant evidentiary value.

The observation was made by a Bench comprising Justice Manoj Misra and Justice Vijay Bishnoi while dismissing the State’s appeal against the acquittal of the accused in The State of Himachal Pradesh v. Varinder Verma @ Jatti & Anr., reported as 2026 LiveLaw (SC) 972. The case concerned a prosecution for murder in which the testimony of PW-3 was relied upon as an important circumstance connecting the accused with the deceased.

The prosecution case involved the death of two persons. PW-3 claimed that the accused persons, who were allegedly carrying dandas, had made inquiries from him about the direction in which the two deceased had gone. According to the prosecution, this circumstance was significant because it allegedly demonstrated that the accused were searching for the deceased shortly before the occurrence.

However, an important difficulty arose from the conduct of PW-3 after the alleged incident. PW-3 reached the place of occurrence within approximately two hours of the incident. The deceased were found injured at the spot, and their relatives, including PW-1, were present. PW-3 was also closely related to the deceased and had reached the scene after receiving a call from PW-1. Despite this opportunity, PW-3 did not disclose to PW-1 that he had allegedly seen the accused armed with dandas and looking for the deceased.

The witness disclosed this alleged incriminating circumstance only on the following day. His statement was recorded by the police in the morning of June 7, 2009, and the accused were arrested shortly thereafter on the same day. The prosecution sought to rely upon this delayed disclosure as an important link in the chain of circumstances.

The Supreme Court, however, found the delay difficult to reconcile with ordinary human conduct. If PW-3 had actually witnessed the accused searching for the deceased while armed with dandas, and if the circumstance was sufficiently serious to result in their immediate arrest once disclosed to the police, there was no satisfactory explanation for his failure to mention it when he first met PW-1 at the scene.

The Court relied upon the principle recognised in its earlier judgment in Kali Ram v. State of Himachal Pradesh, (1973) 2 SCC 808, concerning the approach that courts must adopt when the prosecution evidence gives rise to reasonable doubt. The Court reiterated that suspicion, however strong, cannot take the place of proof and that the prosecution must establish the guilt of an accused beyond reasonable doubt.

The case also involved alleged recovery of blood-stained clothes pursuant to disclosure statements attributed to the accused. Although the forensic report indicated that the blood found on the clothes corresponded with the blood group of the deceased, the investigation did not obtain blood samples of the accused. Consequently, it was not ruled out that the accused could themselves have had the same blood group.

The High Court had also noted the absence of DNA profiling. In the absence of such profiling, the mere fact that the blood group on the recovered clothes matched that of the deceased could not conclusively establish that the blood was actually that of the deceased.

Considering the delayed disclosure by PW-3, the resulting doubt concerning the prosecution story and the inconclusive nature of the forensic circumstance, the Supreme Court declined to interfere with the acquittal. The decision reiterates an important evidentiary principle: a witness’s unexplained silence about a material incriminating circumstance at the earliest available opportunity can become a significant factor in assessing the reliability of his later version.

Arguments of the Parties:

The State of Himachal Pradesh challenged the acquittal of the accused before the Supreme Court. The State sought reversal of the acquittal and relied upon the circumstances which, according to the prosecution, connected the accused with the murder of the two deceased persons.

A central part of the prosecution case was the evidence of PW-3. According to his testimony, the accused had been armed with dandas and had asked him about the direction in which the two deceased had gone. The prosecution treated this circumstance as significant because it allegedly placed the accused in the vicinity of the deceased shortly before the occurrence and indicated that they were looking for them.

The State’s case was also supported by the alleged recoveries made pursuant to the disclosure statements of the accused. Blood-stained clothes were allegedly recovered, and the forensic examination indicated that the blood found on those clothes belonged to the same blood group as that of the deceased. The prosecution sought to rely upon this circumstance as corroborative evidence connecting the accused with the crime.

The State’s position, therefore, was that the evidence had to be considered cumulatively rather than each circumstance in isolation. The testimony concerning the accused being armed and searching for the deceased, the subsequent recoveries and the forensic material were relied upon as circumstances forming part of the prosecution chain.

The respondents, on the other hand, supported the acquittal and questioned the reliability of the prosecution evidence. Their principal difficulty with PW-3’s testimony was the unexplained delay in disclosing the alleged incriminating circumstance.

PW-3 was not a person who had learnt about the alleged conduct of the accused from a remote source much later. His own version was that he had personally encountered the accused while they were allegedly armed with dandas and searching for the deceased. Yet, he reached the place of occurrence within about two hours of the alleged encounter and came into contact with PW-1, who was a close relative of the deceased and the person whose call had brought him to the scene.

Despite the circumstances in which he arrived at the scene, PW-3 did not tell PW-1 that the accused had allegedly been searching for the deceased. He also did not immediately disclose the circumstance to the police. It was only on the following day that the alleged fact emerged in his statement.

The respondents argued that such silence was not a minor discrepancy. It went to the very root of the reliability of the witness. If the accused’s alleged conduct was truly known to PW-3 and was sufficiently significant to implicate them in the murder, his natural reaction would have been to inform the deceased’s relatives or the police at the earliest opportunity.

The respondents also relied upon the weakness of the forensic circumstance. Although the blood found on the recovered clothes allegedly matched the blood group of the deceased, the investigation did not establish through DNA profiling that the blood actually originated from either deceased person.

The respondents pointed out that a blood-group match by itself does not uniquely identify an individual. If other persons, including the accused, could possess the same blood group, the mere matching of blood groups cannot conclusively establish the origin of the blood found on the clothes.

The absence of DNA profiling was therefore highlighted as an important investigative deficiency. The respondents contended that the prosecution could not convert an inconclusive scientific circumstance into a conclusive link in the chain of circumstances.

The defence position was consequently that the prosecution evidence did not establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. At its highest, the evidence generated suspicion regarding the accused, but suspicion could not substitute for legally admissible and reliable proof.

The Supreme Court was therefore required to assess whether the delayed disclosure of PW-3 could safely be relied upon and whether the other circumstances, particularly the recovery of blood-stained clothes, supplied the necessary corroboration. The Court’s assessment ultimately favoured the continuation of the acquittal.

Court’s Judgment:

The Supreme Court dismissed the State’s appeal and upheld the acquittal of the accused. In doing so, the Bench placed considerable emphasis on the unexplained conduct of PW-3 and the evidentiary consequences of his failure to disclose the alleged incriminating circumstance at the earliest opportunity.

The Court began from the factual circumstance that PW-3 had reached the scene within approximately two hours of the alleged encounter. He therefore had an opportunity to speak to persons who were already present at the scene and who had a direct interest in knowing how the deceased had come to be injured or killed.

PW-1 was particularly significant in this regard. He was a close relative of the deceased and, according to the evidence, had himself called PW-3 to the spot. The Court considered it difficult to understand why PW-3 would not have informed PW-1 that he had recently encountered the accused carrying dandas and asking about the whereabouts of the deceased.

The Supreme Court observed that if PW-3 had genuinely witnessed such an incriminating circumstance, he would, in all probability, have informed PW-1. The alleged incident involving the accused had occurred only a couple of hours earlier. The absence of any such disclosure therefore created a serious doubt regarding whether PW-3 had actually witnessed the event in the manner later claimed by him.

The Court stated, in substance, that where a witness claims knowledge of a serious incriminating circumstance but remains silent despite having an immediate opportunity to disclose it, the later version requires careful scrutiny. Silence in such circumstances does not automatically make the witness’s evidence inadmissible or false, but where there is no satisfactory explanation for the silence, it can materially affect the credibility of the subsequent testimony.

This approach is consistent with the broader principles governing appreciation of evidence in criminal trials. A witness’s testimony is not assessed merely by examining whether individual statements are theoretically possible. Courts also consider whether the conduct attributed to the witness is consistent with ordinary human behaviour and the surrounding circumstances.

The Court found the timing of PW-3’s statement particularly significant. His statement was recorded by the police on the morning of June 7, 2009, and the accused were arrested immediately thereafter. The prosecution itself therefore treated the information supplied by PW-3 as sufficiently serious to justify prompt police action.

That circumstance, according to the Supreme Court, made the earlier silence of PW-3 even more difficult to explain. If the information was sufficiently grave to result in the immediate arrest of the accused once disclosed, why had the witness withheld it when he first reached the scene and met the deceased’s relative?

The Court observed that this sequence created a serious doubt about the prosecution case being constructed on suspicion. The problem was not merely that PW-3 had made a statement after some delay. The problem was that his alleged information concerned a highly incriminating circumstance which, if genuinely known to him, would ordinarily have been expected to be disclosed immediately.

The Court’s reasoning reflects the principle that the evidentiary value of a delayed disclosure depends upon the circumstances explaining the delay. A delayed statement is not necessarily unreliable merely because it is delayed. There can be legitimate explanations for silence, including fear, shock, confusion or other circumstances. But where the witness had a clear opportunity to disclose a fact and no cogent explanation is offered for withholding it, the delay may substantially weaken the prosecution case.

The Supreme Court drew support from its earlier decision in Kali Ram v. State of Himachal Pradesh. The judgment in Kali Ram remains a leading authority on the criminal law principle that the prosecution bears the burden of proving guilt beyond reasonable doubt and that where two views are reasonably possible, the one favourable to the accused should ordinarily be adopted.

The significance of Kali Ram in the present case was not limited to a mechanical application of the benefit-of-doubt principle. The Court used the broader evidentiary approach to examine whether the prosecution’s circumstances, taken together, crossed the threshold of proof required for sustaining a criminal conviction.

The Court found that the prosecution evidence contained a material weakness because PW-3’s later disclosure did not fit comfortably with his conduct immediately after the alleged incident. Since the witness’s evidence was relied upon to establish a crucial link connecting the accused with the deceased, the credibility issue assumed considerable importance.

The Court then examined the recovery of blood-stained clothes relied upon by the prosecution. The forensic report indicated that blood found on the clothes corresponded with the blood group of the deceased. However, the High Court had noticed that the investigation did not obtain the blood samples of the accused.

This omission mattered because the investigation had to establish not merely that the blood belonged to a particular blood group, but that the blood actually originated from the deceased. A blood-group match does not by itself identify a unique person.

The Supreme Court agreed with the reasoning that several individuals can share the same blood group. Consequently, if the accused’s own blood group had not been ascertained, the possibility that they possessed the same blood group could not be excluded.

More importantly, the absence of DNA profiling meant that the prosecution lacked a more specific scientific identification of the biological material. DNA profiling, where properly conducted and admissible, can provide significantly more individualised evidence than a conventional blood-group comparison.

The Court therefore treated the recovery evidence as inconclusive. It did not hold that every recovery unsupported by DNA evidence is legally worthless. Rather, in the factual circumstances of the case, the blood-group evidence did not conclusively establish that the blood found on the clothes was that of the deceased.

This distinction is important. Scientific evidence must be evaluated according to what it actually establishes. A report showing that two blood samples belong to the same broad blood group does not necessarily establish that the two samples originated from the same person. The evidentiary value of such material must therefore be assessed in conjunction with other circumstances.

In the present case, the scientific evidence was already insufficient to independently establish the identity of the blood. At the same time, the testimony of PW-3 suffered from a significant credibility problem arising from his unexplained silence. The combined effect meant that the prosecution could not establish a sufficiently reliable chain of circumstances.

The Court also kept in view the fact that the accused had been acquitted by the High Court. An appeal against acquittal requires the appellate court to examine the evidence carefully before substituting its own view. Where the prosecution evidence does not conclusively establish guilt and the view taken by the court below is reasonably possible, interference with an acquittal is not warranted merely because another view may also be conceivable.

The Supreme Court therefore found no sufficient basis to disturb the acquittal.

The judgment is significant for the law relating to delayed disclosure by witnesses. It does not establish an absolute rule that every witness must disclose every fact immediately or that any delay automatically destroys credibility. Instead, the decision reinforces a contextual test: the court must ask whether the witness had an opportunity to disclose the fact, whether the fact was sufficiently important that a natural person would ordinarily have mentioned it, whether the witness had a relationship with the person to whom disclosure could reasonably have been made, and whether there is a satisfactory explanation for the silence.

In the present case, those factors operated against the prosecution. PW-3 was closely connected with the deceased through PW-1, had reached the crime scene soon after the alleged encounter and was in a position to communicate the information. Yet, he did not disclose the crucial circumstance until the following day.

The Court’s reasoning also reinforces the distinction between suspicion and proof in criminal jurisprudence. A prosecution case may contain several circumstances which individually appear suspicious. But the ultimate question is whether those circumstances form a coherent and reliable chain pointing towards the guilt of the accused and excluding reasonable alternative explanations.

Here, the Court found that the delayed testimony of PW-3 weakened one of the important links. The blood-stained clothing did not supply sufficient corroboration because the investigation had not conclusively established the source of the blood. The resulting evidentiary gaps therefore entitled the accused to the benefit of reasonable doubt.

The Supreme Court consequently dismissed the State’s appeal and maintained the acquittal of Varinder Verma @ Jatti and the other accused. The decision reiterates that criminal convictions cannot rest on suspicion, unexplained improvements in testimony or inconclusive forensic material. Where a witness claims to have known a grave incriminating fact but remains silent despite an immediate opportunity to disclose it, the court is entitled to treat that silence as a significant circumstance affecting credibility.

The judgment thus serves as a reminder that the quality and timing of evidence matter as much as its apparent incriminating nature. A fact that emerges only after an unexplained delay, particularly when the witness had an obvious opportunity to disclose it earlier, requires careful judicial scrutiny. When such evidence is accompanied by gaps in scientific investigation, the prosecution must overcome those doubts with other reliable material. In the absence of such evidence, the fundamental criminal law principle that an accused must be proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt continues to operate in favour of the accused.