New Delhi, Jun 26 A Delhi court has acquitted four men accused of murdering a man in West Delhi's Vikas Puri in 2019, saying the prosecution had "miserably failed" to prove its case after all the key public witnesses, including the complainant and alleged eyewitnesses, failed to identify the accused during trial.
Additional Sessions Judge Vandana Jain was hearing the case against Lokesh alias Surya, Pradeep alias Dhilla, Rahul alias Makkhi and Neeraj alias Sanju of offences under IPC Sections 302 (murder)/34 (common intention) and Section 27 (general use of arms) of the Arms Act and acquitted them.
In an order dated June 6, the court said, “Apart from the report of Ballistic, there is no other surrounding or supporting evidence in order to establish that the accused persons were present at the spot at the time of incident or they had killed Amit Kochhar.”
The case pertained to the murder of Amit Kochar, who was shot dead outside his residence in Vikas Puri on the night of June 13, 2019.
According to the prosecution, Kochar was allegedly shot multiple times by armed assailants outside his residence. His friends rushed him to a nearby nursing home where he was declared brought dead.
The prosecution relied primarily on the testimony of Kochar's friends, complainant and witnesses, besides forensic evidence. However, during the trial, all four public witnesses turned hostile on material aspects and failed to identify any of the accused as the assailants.
"The prosecution has miserably failed to prove the guilt of all the accused persons," the court said.
The court noted that although the ballistic examination established that empty cartridges recovered from the crime scene had been fired from a revolver allegedly recovered from accused Lokesh in another case registered in Gurugram about a month after the incident, that circumstance alone was insufficient to establish his involvement in the murder.
"It cannot be presumed that the accused persons would be in the possession of the said weapons on the date of incident... in the absence of any supporting evidence," the judge said.
The court further said that while blood samples collected from the victim's car matched the deceased's blood, the forensic evidence did not establish the presence of any of the accused at the scene of crime.
Observing that there was no other corroborative evidence linking the accused to the murder, the court acquitted all four accused of the charges.
