Four brothers of a girl who had stabbed a man and his sons mistaking them as eve-teasers have been acquitted by a Delhi court after the alleged victims resiled from their statements and failed to identify the accused.
Additional Sessions Judge S K Aggarwal absolved Delhi residents Nawab, Gulfam, Shan and Shamim, who allegedly beat up complainant Layeek Ahmad and his four sons, of charges of attempt to murder and attempt to commit culpable homicide with common intention under various sections of the IPC.
"The testimony of complainant Layeek Ahmad is not cogent as he is putting his entire prosecution story on a roller coaster ride.
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"Ahmad was very consistent in identifying accused persons during examination in chief, but for the reasons best known to him, he failed to identify the accused persons upon being cross examined," the judge said.
According to the prosecution, on October 10, 2007, one of Layeek's sons saved the girl from some eve-teasers in a market near Sultanpuri here but her brothers (accused) beat him up assuming him to be the one who misbehaved with her.
Layeek reached the spot with his three other sons and all of them were beaten up with sticks and were given knife blows, it said. A complaint was lodged by Layeek and the accused were arrested.
However, the complainant and his sons failed to identify the accused in court and resiled from their statements that any such incident had taken place, the court noted.
"It is settled law that whenever there is a confusion regarding the identity of the accused, the benefit of doubt is always required to be provided to the accused, as under the Indian criminal jurisprudence the accused is always presumed to be innocent from the very beginning.
"The testimony of complainant is not reliable, particularly in the given circumstances when all the eyewitnesses who were present at the spot at the time of incident have resiled from their respective earlier statement and could not identify the accused," the court said, while acquitting the accused persons.
During the trial, the accused had denied the allegations leveled against them.
