This is a poignant episode. Last year, I was entrusted with an appeal against conviction under Section 302 IPC, in the Kerala High Court. I generally do not do, criminal appeals, but the pandemic related lockdown dried up most of the civil revenues and forced me to venture into the criminal side.
The case was about murder of an ISRO Officer, at Iringalakkuda, by two persons who befriended him in a train. The motive was theft according to the prosecution, but there were many unexplained contradictions, and evidences pointing towards a gay encounter that went wrong.
Crl Appeal 617/2017
Conducting a murder appeal is a toll on your health, profession and family. It takes months of preparation, research, and weeks of continuous arguments before the division bench. I argued the case, morning to noon, for one whole week. My knees swelled up, by the end of the hearing. The case was reserved for judgment for over a month. Finally, the appeal was dismissed confirming the conviction. I lost.
Why did I lose the case? I could bring out that prosecution had fabricated evidences. Police changed the cloths of the accused before collecting the samples sent to the forensics. Forensic report was self contradicting. There was no motive for the appellant to commit the murder. And hundred other loopholes and inconsistencies. Still the conviction was confirmed with 50more pages than the judgement under appeal. 50more pages to explain the contradictions!
On hindsight, I lost because of dilution of standard of proof in criminal trials. ‘Beyond all reasonable doubts‘ was unceremoniously reduced to ‘Probability of accused to have committed the crime’. (I have wrote another post about it here). I lost because of the prejudices of the judges. Prejudice against the appellant who is already convicted by the trial court for murder.
I am uploading the Arguments Note and the Appeal Judgement to showcase how the standard of proof was blatantly diluted, and the charade a criminal trial and appeal has become. The system is heavily prejudiced against the accused. The system rewards the judges with high conviction rates. The system is descending to please the state and the public. Evidentiary Law is the lone casualty.
There were some takeaways from my bitter experience. The lead judge Justice A Hariprasad, did not deign to write the probability judgment, but relegated it to his junior judge Justice MR Anitha. The prosecutor was bewildered to see the judgement pronounced in his favour, since during arguments, he had admitted to the fudged investigation. I also learned a good lesson that judges known to be good on the civil side is never good in criminal jurisdiction. Justice Hariprasad is an authority in civil laws, my favorite to argue second appeals(civil), but criminal jurisdiction is too hard on his soul.
PTG Associates 