The Supreme Court has cleared a woman of her husband’s murder, nearly two decades after the banker was found dead. The court held that the mere production of telephone call records cannot substitute the ‘substantive proof’ required to sustain a conviction for murder. Monika Kiran Suryawanshi was accused of orchestrating the murder of her husband, Kiran Suryawanshi, a bank employee, in February 2007 over an alleged extramarital affair.
A Bench comprising Justices Sanjay Karol and Prasanna B. Varale upheld the acquittal of Monika, declining to revive the charges of murder and criminal conspiracy against her. The prosecution had alleged that Monika, who had married Kiran in 2001, was involved in an extramarital relationship with her neighbour, Prakash, and that the two, along with another associate, conspired to murder Kiran.
According to the prosecution, Monika first administered sedatives to her husband in the form of tablets and injections before he was fatally assaulted with a grinding stone inside the couple’s residence. The prosecution further alleged that the body was wrapped in plastic and a bedsheet before being transported on a motorcycle for disposal. The alleged attempt to dispose of the body was thwarted when a police constable on patrol noticed two men carrying a suspicious bundle on a motorcycle.
The court observed that the motive for the alleged crime was ‘inherently weak and insufficient to anchor a conviction for murder’. The prosecution’s case relied heavily on telephone call records, but the court found that these records did not provide sufficient evidence to prove Monika’s involvement in the crime. The court also poked holes in the prosecution’s reliance on the call records, noting that there was a ‘total absence of any outgoing call’ from Monika’s mobile phone to Prakash’s on the night of the incident.
The judgment, authored by Justice Varale, observed that, at its highest, the prosecution’s evidence merely suggested ‘a one-sided infatuation’ on the part of the co-accused. The court was critical of the manner in which the investigation had been conducted, finding that the recoveries of a blood-stained grinding stone, a syringe, and certain articles of clothing at Monika’s instance suffered from serious procedural infirmities. The court also found a fundamental inconsistency in the prosecution’s case, noting that the post-mortem report revealed that no blood was found on the mattresses, bed sheet, or pillow inside the house.
The Bench upheld the Bombay High Court’s 2010 judgment acquitting Monika of the charges of murder and criminal conspiracy. However, it affirmed the conviction of Prakash and another co-accused under Section 201 of the Indian Penal Code for causing the disappearance of evidence. The judges pointed out that the evidence conclusively established that the two men were intercepted while transporting Kiran’s body on a motorcycle during the early hours of February 15, 2007.
The two men had already undergone the one-year sentence awarded for the offence under Section 201 of the Indian Penal Code, and the court found no reason to interfere with the High Court’s order directing their release.
