'Nature of injuries indicate death by suicide': Bombay HC acquits man charged with wife's murder

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Acquitting a 35-year-old man from Satara of murder charges, the Bombay High Court said there is a strong possibility that the accused's wife may have died by suicide.

According to a report in Hindustan Times, the prosecution told the court that in May 2013, the woman was found dead under a tree hours after the couple left together to fetch wooden logs in order to support the roof of their hut.

The woman's mother found her daughter drenched in blood with a broken sickle and a blade nearby. Reporting the matter to the police, the mother-in-law accused the woman's husband of murdering her daughter. In April 2015, an additional sessions' judge in Vaduj accepted the prosecution's case based on circumstantial evidence and convicted the man of murdering his wife.

Finding him guilty, the court had sentenced him to life imprisonment. However, the man challenged the conviction. His lawyer Aashish Satpute told the HC that the prosecution failed to prove the homicidal nature of death beyond a reasonable doubt.

The division bench of justices Sadhana Jadhav and NJ Jamadar accepted Satpute's argument. The bench said the prosecution proved that the couple was last seen together, however, it also added that the nature of injuries indicated death by suicide.

"The wounds found on the person of the deceased especially the situs, elective parts, and nature are suggestive of suicidal infliction," the bench noted. Both the judges also pointed out that the woman was right-handed and had two injuries each on her left wrist and left side of the neck.

"One injury each on the wrist and neck was superficial - like a test suicidal infliction and other injuries were deep - perhaps inflicted after the victim gathered more courage to take her own life," the bench stated. They further said that both the injuries were parallel and the clothes of the deceased were not soiled, which they called "other signs of suicidal infliction".

"As the fundamental fact of the deceased having met a homicidal death itself is in the corridor of uncertainty, in our view, the circumstance of last seen and the failure of the accused to offer a plausible explanation, on their own, are not sufficient to sustain the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt," the court observed.