Cuttack: The Orissa High Court has acquitted two men on death row, citing insufficient evidence and procedural errors in the trial court’s ruling.
Prakash Behera and Nandakishor Sethy were sentenced to death for the 2017 murder of a couple and their minor son in Angul district.
The division bench of Justices Sangam Kumar Sahoo and Sibo Sankar Mishra, however, overturned the September 27, 2024, conviction of the additional sessions judge in Athamallik, noting that the prosecution failed to prove the accused’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt.
Biranchi Naik, his wife Tarani, and their eight-year-old son Ekalabya were found with their throats slit at Gambharimaliha village on October 9, 2017. Following an FIR filed by Naik’s brother, the accused were arrested a few days later. They had allegedly entered the victims’ home at an isolated end of the village to rob, abducted Naik and his son, and later also murdered the wife. The bodies were later dumped kilometres apart to destroy evidence and evade the law while the weapon and blood-stained clothes were discarded in remote areas.
The trial court had labeled the case “rarest of rare” and imposed the death penalty, but the High Court found the verdict relied on conjecture and DNA report analysis, lacking evidence of proper handling and sealing of exhibits. “There is no clinching evidence relating to the involvement of the appellants in the commission of the triple murder. The verdict is nothing but a sheer moral conviction. There is no discussion in the impugned judgment relating to the proper sealing of the exhibits after its seizure, safe custody of the exhibits, absence of any explanation from the side of the prosecution relating to delayed dispatch of the exhibits to court and the effect of delay when most of the exhibits were produced in unsealed condition,” the HC observed.
The court acquitted Behera and Sethy of all charges and ordered their immediate release, unless needed in other cases.
