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Accused Has The Right To Remain Silent And Such Silence Cannot Be Held To Be An Admission
06 Sep 2019 05:13 pm
The Calcutta High Court exonerated a convict from the charge of Murder under Section 302 of IPC, stating that Section 106 of the Indian Evidence Act does not discharge the prosecution from proving its case beyond reasonable doubt and that an accused has the right to silence without being adversely affected by such silence.
Background
The appeal was filed by one Prasanta Biswas who had been sentenced to life term by the Additional Sessions Judge of Ranaghat for murdering his wife. The prosecution's case therein was that the appellant used to torture the victim and must have murdered her in order to pursue his illicit relationship with a lady of his village, Swapna. However, none of those witnesses had seen the appellant mixing with Swapna.
In the statements made by the appellant under Section 313 of CrPC, he denied all the allegations leveled against him, claiming that he was not at home at the time of the alleged incident.
Passing the order of conviction, the Additional Sessions Judge held that the accused had special knowledge of the facts and circumstances in which his wife was murdered and the burden was on him to explain those circumstances. However, such burden had not been discharged and mere denial of presence at the time of the incident would not provide the accused with a good alibi. Reliance in this regard was placed on Section 106 of the Evidence Act which states that when any fact is especially within the knowledge of any person, the burden of proving that fact is upon him.
