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Sunday, May 22, 2005

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Orissa High Court indicts CBI in Staines murder case

Prafulla Das

Comes down heavily on investigating officer

BHUBANESWAR: The Orissa High Court has indicted the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for "faulty investigation" carried out in the case pertaining to the killing of the Australian missionary, Graham Stuart Staines, and his two sons.

In its judgment pronounced on Thursday, a Division Bench, comprising Chief Justice Sujit Barman Roy and Justice Laxmikanta Mohapatra, said that "such lapses on the part of an elite investigating agency like the CBI cannot be excused.''

With regard to the identification of Dara Singh, one of the witnesses could only identify the accused in the court on the basis of photographs shown to him by the Investigating Officer before start of the trial. The court wondered why the photographs were not placed before the Judicial Magistrate for conducting the test identification parade.

Coming down heavily on the investigating officer for adopting improper methods to acquire evidence, the judges observed that ``no court of law, unless utterly over-credulous, can act upon such evidence on a most important question as to the identification of the offenders.''

``It was absolutely unfair and unethical on the part of the overzealous CBI investigating officers to adopt such unheard of methods to procure tainted evidence to somehow procure convictions of the appellants,'' the court observed.

Coincidence?

The court, which ordered the acquittal of 11 of the accused, also expressed surprise at the manner in which some "confessional statements'' were extracted from the appellants by the CBI.

The judges pointed out that a striking feature was the coincidence of all appellants making confessional statements soon after the investigation was handed over to the CBI.

``None made any such confession before that. Whether it is accidental coincidence, we are unable to say anything. But this conjunction of events raise serious doubts in our minds.''

The judges also pulled up the investigating agency for not producing an accused, Umakanta Bhoi, before the lower court for seven days after his arrest.

"We cannot rule out the possibility that the accused was kept in CBI custody without the sanction of law at least from August 24, 1999 until he was produced before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate.''

The court also set aside the conviction of all the accused under Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code (criminal conspiracy) for submission of "speculative evidence'' by the CBI.

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