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The acquittal and after

When Shibu Soren was convicted by a trial court in November 2006 for conspiring to murder his private secretary, the Central Bureau of Investigation prided itself on having marshalled a wealth of ‘scientific evidence’ to nail him. But the Delhi High Court has now tossed that aside, chiding the prosecution for having “miserably failed in bringing home the charges against the accused persons.” The court has clearly adjudged that the forensic evidence — comprising DNA fingerprinting, advanced skull superimposition tests, and a post-mortem report — was either inconclusive or not properly considered. The High Court’s conclusion that the CBI failed to prove its case against the former Union Minister and President of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha was based on two main grounds. First, the CBI failed to prove that the body it had recovered from a farmhouse near Ranchi, the key piece of evidence in the case, was that of Shashinath Jha, Mr. Soren’s secretary. (Mr. Jha, who allegedly knew about money received by JMM MPs from the Congress party, went missing in 1994; a skeleton said to be his was exhumed by the CBI in 1998.) The High Court also ruled that the trial court relied much too heavily on the skull superimposition tests, a procedure that maps skulls with faces with the help of photographs, producing results that were at best inconclusive. The trial court was also faulted for ignoring the decisive DNA tests conducted on the skeletal remains.

Secondly, the High Court held that the CBI had failed to establish the existence of a conspiracy to abduct and murder Mr. Jha. Observing there was nothing on record to show “when and where the conspiracy was hatched,” it said the trial court’s conclusion that the conspiracy was proved was “fanciful and based on conjectures.” The Delhi High Court ruling clears the path for Mr. Soren to return to ministerial office either at the Centre or at the State level. But Mr. Soren is an accused in another case, relating to the killing of 10 villagers during the campaign for a Jharkhand State in 1975. Almost half the accused in the three-decade-old case are dead. In 2004, an arrest warrant in this case forced Mr. Soren’s resignation as Coal Minister. He was reinstated in the Union Cabinet in early 2006, but resigned once more following his conviction in the Jha murder case. In the wake of Mr. Soren’s exoneration, Chief Minister Madhu Koda of Jharkhand has announced his willingness to vacate the chair in favour of “Guruji.” The CBI has declared it will appeal against the acquittal but it is extremely unlikely that the outcome will be any different. It is best that the country’s premier investigation agency heeds the import of the High Court’s emphatic judgment that the prosecution failed “miserably” to bring home the charges.

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