Chhawla case: Supreme Court acquits 3 men facing death for 2012 gang rape

The Supreme Court on Monday acquitted three men sentenced to death for the 2012 gang rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman, citing glaring lapses in the investigation and trial of the case, leading to serious doubts in the minds of the top court judges. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Uday Umesh Lalit said, “Having regard to the totality of circumstances and the evidence on record, it is difficult to hold that the prosecution had proved the guilt of the accused by adducing cogent and clinching evidence.” On February 9, 2012, the woman, who worked with a private company in Gurugram’s Cyber City, had de-boarded a bus at Qutub Vihar, a mere 10-walk away from her house at Chhawla Camp, and was walking home with two friends, when she was waylaid and abducted by the occupants of a red Tata Indica car. Sentencing them to death, the high court judges had observed, “It would be a crime against the society to allow those who are so inveterately depraved the freedom to wander, in fact their fellows, prey upon society, and to multiply their kind.” Setting aside their conviction, the Supreme Court bench, also comprising justices S Ravindra Bhat and Bela M Tripathi, laid bare the faults in the investigation of the case by the Delhi Police and the subsequent trial conducted at the special fast track court at Dwarka, saying, “It may be true that if the accused involved in the heinous crime go unpunished or are acquitted, a kind of agony and frustration may be caused to the society in general and to the family of the victim in particular. All this made the court conclude, “We find that the Appellants-accused were deprived of their rights to have a fair trial, apart from the fact that the truth also could not be elicited by the trial court.” Being a death sentence case, justice Trivedi, writing the judgment for the bench, said, “Every case has to be decided by the Courts strictly on merits and in accordance with law without being influenced by any kind of outside moral pressures or otherwise.” She even doubted the reports regarding DNA profiling as the hair strands of the deceased were found from the car tools.