NEW DELHI, June 21: A man who had confessed to have strangled his 4-year-old son due to financial crisis has been let off by a Delhi court which said the police has failed to prove even a single link of circumstantial evidence against him.
Additional Sessions Judge Vijay Kumar Dahiya acquitted Rakesh Kumar, the father of the deceased saying the police has failed to prove even the motive behind the offence.
The court said the prosecution has failed to prove either the motive or the alleged confession made by the accused before his wife and his fatherinlaw respectively or that the deceased was last seen with the accused.
“As such prosecution has failed to prove even a single link in the chain of circumstantial evidence and there is no evidence to connect the accused with the alleged offence,” it added.
The police had said the boy had gone missing on February 9, 2011 while he was playing outside his house at Najafgarh in West Delhi.
Accordingly, Kumar and his wife had lodged missing report for their minor son with the nearby police station. On Feburary 10, 2011 the police got the information that a dead body of a boy has been recovered.
The body was identified by Kumar and his wife as their minor son, it said.
The police also said feeling guilty of his offence, Kumar himself had admitted before his wife and father-in-law that on account of the low income and heavy indebtedness, he killed his own son.
The police had told the court that Kumar had made his confession even before the police and had sought punishment for his crime.
Kumar further said he wanted to commit suicide but due to the presence of his family members, he could not do so, the police added.
Acquitting Kumar, the court said the star witnesses in the case, after entering into the witness box resiled from his earlier statement made before the police and did not support the case of the prosecution. “So this link is totally missed out in the present case,” it said.
It also said none of the prosecution witnesses has seen the accused killing his son.
The judge in his judgement said the prosecution has failed to prove that the accused killed his son due to his poverty, pointing out that as per the testimony of another prosecution witness Ravi Bhardwaj, the manager with the Rohini Cooperative T/C Society Ltd, the accused had taken a loan of Rs one lakh but it was paid back regularly.
“Counsel for the state has contended that the accused had also pointed out the place where he had thrown the dead body of his son after strangulation but this contention is also having no force as place of occurrence, from where the dead body was recovered, was earlier known to the police and this is not a discovery of facts at the instance of the accused as alleged,” the court observed.
It also said the contentions of the counsel for state that Kumar has also made his confession admitting his guilt that the accused had murdered his son is admissible in evidence is devoid of merits, as confession made before the police is inadmissible in evidence being hit by Section 25 and 26 of the Indian Evidence Act. (PTI)
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