CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court has acquitted a woman, who spent over 12 years in prison on a life sentence for the murder of her husband, Mangal Mundari. The court ruled that the trial court’s judgement was a “miscarriage of justice.”
According to the prosecution, Sunita Mundari allegedly poured kerosene on her husband and set him on fire at Jhirpani village in Sundargarh on November 28, 2011. A Rourkela sessions court subsequently sentenced her on December 20, 2014.
Sunita, now 64, filed an appeal in the High Court the same year. On Thursday, a bench of Justices S.K. Sahoo and Chittaranjan Dash held that there was “no clinching evidence against the appellant (Sunita).”
The bench noted that the evidence presented did not form a complete chain to conclusively prove that Sunita committed the crime. “The findings of the trial court are not justified; the circumstances in favor of the appellant have been ignored, and, thereby, it has resulted in a miscarriage of justice,” the bench added.
The High Court set aside Sunita’s conviction under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (murder) and ordered her release. The bench observed that the trial court had concluded that Sunita was murdered because of the lack of direct evidence.
“In a case based on circumstantial evidence, there is always a danger that conjecture or suspicion may take the place of legal proof,” the bench stated.
