STATE OF KARNATAKA Vs. FIROZ ALIAS JAGGUR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) WE have heard the learned Additional State Public Prosecutor at some length in this case.

(2.) THIS is a case in which the accused who was then aged 20 years, had been pestering the deceased Mumtaz to marry him. Mumtaz was virtually a child being hardly 14 years old and she did not respond to the pressure which the accused was putting on her. The accused is alleged to have thereupon doused her with kerosene and set fire to her clothes. Mumtaz sustained extensive burn injuries covering 95% of her body, she was taken to hospital in a precarious condition and she died after about one day. The prosecution alleges that PW 5 Bhagyamma was one of the first to come there and Bhagyamma has very clearly mentioned in her Police statement that she saw the accused running away from that place. According to her, the deceased stated to her that it was the accused who had set fire to her clothes. Bhagyamma has resailed to some extent from her statement. This is nothing unusual because this Court has had to note with a degree of distress, that the main method of securing acquittals in criminal cases in this State appears to be not by demolishing the prosecution case on merits or by any professional skills but by resort to corrupt means such as by tampering with the witnesses. With due apologies to Hamlet who stated that "something is rotten in the State of Denmark" the situation here appears to be absolutely putrid. Witnesses turning hostile is a malpractice that has become rampant and has reached epidemic or rather malignant proportions and the law does prescribe rigorous action against persons who give false evidence in Court as also against those who induce such a situation. The beneficiary is always the accused who needs to be straightaway hauled up and yet there is not a single instance where counter action has been taken.

(3.) THIS has led to a situation whereby the tampering of the evidence has become so rampant that over 90% of the criminal cases and in acquittals. An investigation into the situation indicates that the Police have their own role to play in these operations because they either do not produce witnesses who are inconvenient or they are instrumental in joining hands with the defence in order to tamper with or destroy the oral and documentary evidence. It is therefore absolutely imperative that if the total breakdown of the law and order situation is to be avoided; that Courts will have to make an example at least in a few cases of the persons who are responsible for this, irrespective of who they are, direct action against them and in those of the cases where the culprits are found guilty by awarding exemplary sentences and that the message goes out loud and dear that the Courts will not countenance such atrocities any more.