Case analysis by Akinchan Aggarwal, Advocate — B.A. (Hons.) Gold Medalist, LL.B. (University Rank 2), LL.M. (Dispute Resolution), UGC–NET, Ph.D. (Pursuing)
A man convicted of murdering his wife by setting her on fire, sentenced to life imprisonment by the Trial Court and affirmed by the High Court, has been acquitted by the Supreme Court because not one of the circumstances the prosecution relied on was actually proved at trial.
The decision is Jupudi Suresh v. The State of Andhra Pradesh, 2026 INSC 832, delivered on 11 August 2026 by a Bench of Justice J.B. Pardiwala and Justice K. Vinod Chandran, the judgment being authored by Justice Vinod Chandran.
The proposition that has travelled furthest in the reporting is the one on Section 161 CrPC — that a statement recorded by the police during investigation cannot be used to convict, and that a High Court cannot hold a witness's court testimony to be an "afterthought" by comparing it against a police statement that was never put to the witness at all. That is indeed the cleanest ratio in the judgment and I deal with it in full below.
But the single most damning finding in this case has gone almost entirely unreported, and it is worth putting at the top.
Two dying declarations were recorded at the same time, by two different officers, from the same dying woman.
The Head Constable's declaration was recorded in a window running up to 9.15 a.m. on 7 May 2013. The Executive Magistrate's declaration records the time of recording as 8.55 a.m. on the same morning.
In the Court's words: "We cannot also ignore the fact that the Executive Magistrate notices the time at which the dying declaration was recorded as 8.55 am, at which time the Head Constable is said to have been recording the dying declaration." Both cannot be true. A woman with 96% burns was not dictating two separate statements to two separate officers simultaneously. Once that is seen, the rest of the prosecution case does not survive.
Case at a Glance
| Particulars | Details |
|---|---|
| Case | Jupudi Suresh v. The State of Andhra Pradesh |
| Citation | 2026 INSC 832 — Non-Reportable |
| Case number | Criminal Appeal No. 4849 of 2025 |
| Bench | J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran, JJ. |
| Judgment by | K. Vinod Chandran, J. |
| Date | 11 August 2026 |
| Date of incident | 6 May 2013 |
| Below | Conviction under Section 302 IPC and life imprisonment, affirmed by the High Court |
| Result | ✔ Conviction set aside; accused acquitted |
| Counsel | Satinder Singh Gulati for the appellant (AOR Raj Kishor Choudhary); Prerna Singh, Government Advocate, for the State |
The Facts
The couple lived in a house adjacent to the home of the wife's parents — an arrangement the prosecution said had come about because of constant quarrels between them. On 6 May 2013, according to the prosecution, the deceased returned from work to find money she had kept in the house missing. She questioned her husband, who was said to be habituated to alcohol. Enraged, he poured kerosene over her, set her ablaze and left. She died of her burns. Two children were orphaned.
The prosecution's case rested on four circumstances:
1. The homicidal nature of the death, as emerging from the post-mortem report.
2. Constant quarrels between the couple, supplying motive.
3. Two dying declarations.
4. The absence of any explanation from the husband under Section 106 of the Evidence Act for a death by burns occurring inside the matrimonial home.
The Trial Court convicted. The High Court affirmed. The Supreme Court took each circumstance in turn and found that none of them had been established.
The Witnesses Who Were Never Declared Hostile
The three closest relatives of the deceased were examined as prosecution witnesses: PW1 (her sister), PW2 (her cousin) and PW3 (her mother).
In examination-in-chief, all three said they had reached the scene on hearing the deceased's cries, found her ablaze and tried to put out the fire. PW2 said the appellant was present and he too tried to save her. Beyond a mention by PW1 and PW3 of a quarrel at 10 p.m., there was nothing incriminating in the chief examination at all.
In cross-examination, all three said the deceased had committed suicide on account of her ailments — she suffered from fits and stomach ache — that there had been no quarrel between the couple, and that the dying declarations had come about because of influence exerted by local political leaders.
Two things then failed to happen, and they decided the appeal.
PW1 to PW3 were never declared hostile. They were never re-examined.
The Trial Court and the High Court simply proceeded on the footing that these witnesses had been "won over" by the accused and that their evidence contradicted an earlier version. But the machinery for establishing that — declaring the witness hostile, putting the previous statement to him, and then proving the contradiction — was never invoked.
The Section 161 Point — The Central Ratio
This is the holding that will be cited. The Court said:
"The chief examination incriminates the accused only with a quarrel, not to the extent of a long-lasting marital discord. Even if the Court found the cross-examination to be not credible, it was not proper for the Court to assume that the version of PW1 to PW3 was an afterthought. Insofar as the earlier version referred to in the impugned judgement, obviously it is the Section 161 statements, which cannot be relied on for convicting an accused. Their testimony before Court is what has to be relied on for conviction or acquittal and earlier versions have to be put to the witnesses and the contradictions elicited as having occurred, by confirming such Section 161 statements from the Investigating Officer (IO)."
And then, in terms that leave no room for doubt about what went wrong below:
"The High Court egregiously erred in finding the testimony to be contrary to their earlier version, when neither was the earlier version put to the witnesses nor the statements allegedly made, confronted to the IO."
Why a Section 161 statement is not evidence
The principle is old and settled, but it is astonishing how often it is overlooked in trial courts, and this case shows it being overlooked all the way up to a High Court.
A statement recorded by a police officer under Section 161 CrPC during investigation is not substantive evidence. It is not on oath, it is not tested by cross-examination, and Section 162 CrPC expressly forbids the witness from even signing it. Section 162(1) provides that no such statement shall be used for any purpose at any inquiry or trial, save for one narrow exception: it may be used by the accused, and with the court's permission by the prosecution, to contradict the witness in the manner provided by Section 145 of the Evidence Act.
The three-step mechanism is mandatory, and skipping any step means the contradiction simply does not exist in the record:
| Step | What must be done |
|---|---|
| 1 | The specific portion of the previous statement must be put to the witness in cross-examination, and his attention drawn to it |
| 2 | If the witness denies having made it, the portion must be marked for identification |
| 3 | The Investigating Officer must be confronted with it and must prove that the witness did make that statement to him |
Only when all three are done does the contradiction enter the record — and even then it does not become proof of the truth of the earlier version. It only damages the credit of the witness. A police statement can never, by itself, supply the missing link in a prosecution case.
Here, none of the three steps was taken, and yet the High Court treated the witnesses' court evidence as displaced by their supposed earlier version. That is what the Supreme Court called an egregious error.
The provisions today
The offence in this case was committed in 2013, so the old Codes applied throughout. For readers applying this reasoning to a trial today, the equivalents are:
| Old provision | New provision | Subject |
|---|---|---|
| Section 161 CrPC | Section 180 BNSS | Examination of witnesses by police |
| Section 162 CrPC | Section 181 BNSS | Statements to police not to be signed; restricted use in evidence |
| Section 145 Evidence Act | Section 148 BSA | Cross-examination as to previous statements in writing |
| Section 154 Evidence Act | Section 157 BSA | Questions by a party to his own witness (hostile witness) |
| Section 32(1) Evidence Act | Section 26(a) BSA | Dying declaration |
| Section 106 Evidence Act | Section 109 BSA | Burden of proving fact especially within knowledge |
| Section 302 IPC | Section 103 BNS | Punishment for murder |
| Section 498A IPC | Section 85 BNS | Cruelty by husband or relative |
This mapping is provided for convenience. As always, verify against the bare Act before citing in court.
The Dying Declarations — Four Separate Defects
A dying declaration can be the sole basis of a conviction. That has been the law since Khushal Rao v. State of Bombay. But it must first be shown to be true, voluntary and reliable, and it must be proved like any other document. Here, neither declaration cleared those hurdles.
Defect 1 — The first declaration was never legally proved. It was recorded by a Head Constable who died before the trial. It was produced instead by PW8, a Sub-Inspector. But PW8's evidence went no further than saying he had received a statement recorded by the Head Constable, on the strength of which he registered a case under Sections 498A and 307 IPC (later altered to Section 302 on intimation of death). As the Court noted, PW8 did not affirm the Head Constable's signature, nor was he confronted with the statement as being the one he had received. A document produced is not a document proved.
Defect 2 — The fifteen-hour hole. The FIR records that PW8 received the Head Constable's statement at 1.00 a.m. on 8 May 2013. But the declaration itself shows recording concluding at 9.15 a.m. on 7 May 2013. The Court called the gap "very crucial" — why was a statement that had been recorded by 9.15 a.m. registered as an FIR only more than fifteen hours later? An unexplained delay of that length in setting the criminal law in motion, in a case where the informant is a dying woman, invites exactly the inference the Court drew.
Defect 3 — The impossible clock. This is the point set out at the head of this analysis. The Executive Magistrate's declaration bears a recording time of 8.55 a.m. — squarely inside the window during which the Head Constable was supposedly recording his own declaration from the same woman.
Defect 4 — The motives did not match. The two declarations gave different reasons for the accused having attacked her. The Court declined to dwell on the inconsistency only because it had already found the declarations suspicious on other grounds.
One point on which the Court refused to help the defence deserves noting, because it shows the judgment is not a one-sided reading of the record. PW1 to PW3 had alleged that the dying declarations were procured through the influence of "local political leaders". The Court rejected that outright as "a bland statement without any substantiation", observing that the defence had not even revealed who these leaders were or what enmity they bore towards the accused.
The 96% Burns Point — Read This Carefully
The post-mortem showed burns over 96% of the body surface — scalp, face, neck, chest front and back, both upper limbs, abdomen, both lower limbs and genitalia, with unburnt patches only over the front of the abdomen.
Two things followed from that.
First, on the manner of burning. The Court observed that burns extending over the scalp did not sit easily with the prosecution theory of kerosene being poured over the victim by another person, and were more consistent with the deceased having doused herself. But the Court was scrupulous about the limits of that observation: the doctor was never cross-examined on this aspect, and no question was put to him about suicide, even though suicide was the defence emerging from the witnesses. So the point remained a doubt, not a finding.
Second, on fitness to make a declaration. In cross-examination, the post-mortem doctor (PW11) stated that only a victim sustaining burns between 80 and 90% could speak well. The attending doctor (PW7) put the victim's injuries at 95% to 100%. The prosecution's own medical evidence therefore placed the deceased outside the range in which, on its own expert's view, a credible statement was possible.
Do not over-read this as a rule about burn percentages.
It is not the law that a victim with more than 90% burns is incapable of making a dying declaration. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld declarations by victims with very extensive burns, including 100%, where the record showed the declarant was conscious and coherent. What defeated the prosecution here was narrower and more interesting: its own expert witness had set the ceiling at 80–90%, and its own attending doctor had placed the victim above it. The inconsistency was internal to the prosecution case. Cite this case for that proposition, not for a numerical threshold that does not exist.
Section 106 of the Evidence Act — Why No Adverse Inference Arose
The prosecution's fourth circumstance was the husband's failure to explain a death occurring inside the matrimonial home. Section 106 places the burden of proving a fact especially within a person's knowledge upon that person, and in the line of cases beginning with Trimukh Maroti Kirkan v. State of Maharashtra, courts have used it where a spouse dies inside a house shared only with the accused.
The Court held that no such circumstance arose here, and the reasoning is worth understanding because it marks the real boundary of Section 106 in domestic-death cases.
Section 106 bites where the fact in question is especially within the knowledge of the accused — typically because he alone was present. On this record, the deceased's own relatives had deposed that they reached the scene on hearing her cries, that the accused was present, and that he had tried to douse the fire. Once others are on the scene and the accused's conduct is spoken to by the prosecution's own witnesses, the exclusivity of knowledge that Section 106 depends on simply evaporates. There was no gap in the narrative for the accused to fill, and therefore no silence from which to draw an inference.
It also bears repeating that Section 106 is a rule about a subsidiary burden. It never relieves the prosecution of proving its case beyond reasonable doubt, and it cannot be pressed into service to supply a foundation the prosecution has failed to lay. Where, as here, the prosecution has not proved a single primary circumstance, there is nothing for Section 106 to attach to.
What the Court Did Not Hold
One clarification, because at least one report of this judgment states that the Bench "took the view that the death was homicidal". That is not what the judgment says, and the distinction matters.
At paragraph 6 the Court recorded that the cause of death was declared simply as "burns", which "does not clearly point to a homicidal death". It then said: "Be that as it may, for the present we will take it that the death was homicidal, despite the prosecution also having not brought out the cause of death... as to whether it is a suicide or a murder."
That is an assumption made arguendo so that the Court could test the remaining circumstances on the prosecution's best case. It is not a finding. And by paragraph 13 the Court had reached the opposite conclusion: "The homicidal death has also not been established equivocally, and doubt lingers as to whether it was a suicide; which was also the version of the relatives of the deceased themselves."
Reading a provisional assumption as a holding is an easy mistake to make from a summary. It is also the kind of mistake that gets a citation rejected across the Bar table.
The Conclusion
The Court's final assessment was unusually blunt:
"We find absolutely no reason to sustain the conviction as entered into by the Trial Court and the High Court. There is no single circumstance proved by the prosecution in trial and the doubt regarding the death having been caused by suicide bring us to disbelieve the prosecution version, as a reasonable doubt lingers in our minds. The prosecution failed to prove a single circumstance and the accused hence stands acquitted."
The accused was directed to be set free if not required in any other case, and his bail bonds, if already released, were cancelled.
Takeaways for Practitioners
1. A police statement is not a substitute for evidence, and no court may treat it as one. If you are prosecuting and your witness resiles, you must declare him hostile, put the statement to him, and prove the contradiction through the IO. If you do not, you have nothing. If you are defending, and the judgment against your client rests on an "earlier version" that was never put to anybody, you have a clean ground of appeal.
2. Producing a dying declaration is not proving it. Where the recording officer has died, the prosecution must still establish the document — through proof of handwriting or signature, or through the officer who received it being confronted with it. A Sub-Inspector saying "I received a statement" proves nothing about what the statement contains or who wrote it.
3. Check the clocks. This entire case turned on timings that could not be reconciled — a declaration recorded at 8.55 a.m. by one officer while another was recording one, and an FIR registered fifteen hours after the statement it was based on. In dying declaration cases, the timeline is often where the case is won.
4. Cross-examine the doctor on the mechanism, not just the injuries. The Bench itself noticed that scalp burns pointed away from the prosecution's pouring theory — and then noted that the defence had never put this to the doctor. The accused was acquitted anyway, but on a fuller cross-examination the point would have been a finding rather than a passing doubt.
5. Section 106 needs exclusivity. The moment the prosecution's own witnesses place third parties at the scene and describe the accused trying to help, the "especially within his knowledge" foundation is gone.
6. Do not allege influence without particulars. The defence's claim that the dying declarations were procured by "local political leaders" was rejected in one line for want of any substantiation. An unparticularised allegation of that kind adds nothing and costs credibility.
A note on precedential weight.
This judgment is marked Non-Reportable. It remains a decision of the Supreme Court and the propositions in it are sound and consistent with long-settled law on Sections 161 and 162 CrPC. But a non-reportable judgment is not carried in the official reports, and where a reported authority exists on the same point, cite that. For the Section 161 proposition there is no shortage of reported authority; use this case for its facts and its illustration of how the rule is breached in practice.
This analysis is based on my own reading of the full text of the judgment in Criminal Appeal No. 4849 of 2025, decided on 11 August 2026. It is written for the information of readers and is not legal advice, nor a substitute for reading the judgment itself. The statutory mapping between the old and new Codes is offered for convenience and should be verified against the bare Acts. Please read our Disclaimer for more details.
