Hyderabad: Last year on March 24, Vijayawada city had witnessed an unprecedented protest. Hundreds of protesters, mostly women professionals, marched to the police commissioner's office seeking the arrest of the perpetrators in 41-year-old M. Himabindu’s gang rape cum murder case.
The protesters had compared the case to the Nirbhaya case in New Delhi. Amid the media frenzy and public protest, Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan had intervened in the matter, compelling the Vijayawada police to speed up the probe.
The police cracked the case and arrested six people including the driver of the victim’s husband 10 days after the incident. The investigation team recovered a number of evidences including the victim’s ornaments, cellphone, slippers and saris from the suspects.
Now, after a year and four months, this week the case fell flat in court, which acquitted all the six accused in the case.
Mahila Sessions Court Judge G. Anupama Chakravarthy said the prosecution had failed to produce evidence to convict the accused.
“The entire case is based on circumstantial evidence. There is no direct evidence to prove their guilt. There are lapses in investigation,” the judge said.
Superficial investigation, filing of defective chargesheet and inefficient prosecution are resulting in accused individuals going free in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh after years of investigations and trials.
Most suspects are acquitted as the conviction rate in major offences like murder and rape are not more than 25 per cent.
The best conviction rate achieved by the state police is around 46 per cent in vehicle theft cases.
Investigation officials often fail to collect evidence properly, and their cases fall flat during trial. Defence lawyers can punch holes in police contentions easily as the evidence is weak.
Chargesheets, even in major cases, are often filed late despite the 90-day deadline. Legal experts say that registration of a huge number of false cases also lead to low rate of conviction.
“Another issue is that several civil cases are given the colour of criminal offences and later the parties settle cases before prosecution,” said prominent High Court criminal lawyer Nageswar Rao Pappu.
Defence advocates say that there are several prominent cases in which investigation officials picked up innocent people.
“The Macca Masjid blast case is an example. Many people were arrested and tortured and they were later acquitted by court,” said another prominent lawyer.
