Sukhar v State of Uttar Pradesh

Facts

The appellant Sukhar allegedly shot Nakkal with a country-made pistol on 17 April 1978 over a dispute relating to cultivation and the demand for a share (batai). On hearing the gunshot, Pitam (PW-2) reached the spot and the injured Nakkal told him that Sukhar had fired at him. Nakkal survived the injury but died during the pendency of the trial, with no connection established between the injury and his death; he was therefore never examined as a witness. The trial court and High Court convicted Sukhar under Section 307 IPC, relying on PW-2's account of what the injured told him.

Issues

• Whether PW-2's testimony as to the injured's statement naming the assailant, made immediately after the firing, is admissible under Section 6 of the Evidence Act as part of the same transaction (res gestae).
• Whether such res gestae evidence, by itself, is sufficient to sustain a conviction without corroboration where the witness is shown to be inimical to the accused.

Arguments

The appellant argued that the injured's statement to PW-2 did not form part of the same transaction because of the lapse of time and the gathering of many persons, and that PW-2 was an interested and unreliable witness whose testimony was uncorroborated. The State contended that the firing and the injured's immediate statement to PW-2 constituted one continuous transaction admissible under Section 6, and that nothing in cross-examination shook PW-2's credibility.

Held

The Court held that the principle embodied in Section 6 is the rule of res gestae, an exception to the rule against hearsay, under which a statement is admissible only if it is contemporaneous with the act constituting the offence or made at least immediately thereafter, so that there is no opportunity for fabrication. Applying this, PW-2's evidence of the injured's statement naming Sukhar, made spontaneously right after the firing, was held admissible under Section 6. The statement could not be treated as a dying declaration under Section 32(1) because the injured later died without it being shown that death resulted from the injury. However, on the facts, PW-2 was found to be inimically disposed towards the accused, and although over twenty persons had gathered at the spot, none was examined to corroborate him; the Court therefore held that such uncorroborated, interested testimony was not of so unimpeachable a character that conviction could rest on it alone. The appeal was allowed, the conviction and sentence set aside, and the appellant acquitted.

Ratio decidendi

A spontaneous statement made contemporaneously with, or immediately after, the act constituting the offence forms part of the same transaction and is admissible under Section 6 of the Evidence Act as res gestae, being an exception to the hearsay rule. Admissibility under Section 6, however, goes only to relevancy; the evidence must still be reliable, and conviction cannot rest solely on such a statement spoken to by a single interested or hostile witness without corroboration.

Significance

A leading Supreme Court authority on the scope and limits of res gestae under Section 6 IEA — now Section 4 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, which restates the same principle that facts forming part of the same transaction are relevant. It is repeatedly cited for the twin tests of substantial contemporaneity and the absence of opportunity for fabrication, and for the caution that admissibility does not equal sufficiency. The dying-declaration point (Section 32(1) IEA, now Section 26(a) BSA) reaffirms that such a statement is admissible only where death is shown to be connected to the injury; here the offence was punishable under Section 307 IPC, corresponding to Section 109 BNS, 2023.

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