The Supreme Court has held that inferences drawn from the digestive state of a deceased person cannot be used to overturn the clear account of credible eyewitnesses on the time of a murder. In Shekappa & Ors. v. State of Karnataka (2026 INSC 1189 , 3rd November 2026) a Bench of Justice K.V. Viswanathan and Justice Arun Palli upheld the conviction of seven men for the 2001 killing of two brothers, affirming the Karnataka High Court’s reversal of an acquittal recorded by the Sessions Court.
Factual Background
In the intervening night of 8 and 9 September 2001, two brothers were attacked with an axe near their house in Karnataka and died. The assaults were witnessed by the wives of the deceased. The autopsy established that both deaths were homicidal and the axe used in the offence was recovered pursuant to disclosure statements made by the Accused. The Sessions Court nonetheless acquitted all the Accused. The High Court reversed that decision and convicted them and the convicts then approached the Supreme Court.
The Trial Court’s Reasoning
The Acquittal leaned heavily on a medical inference. The Autopsy Doctor had answered a question put by the High Court and the Sessions Court used that answer to reason about the digestive process of the deceased and from it, to disbelieve the incident as narrated by the eyewitnesses. The Sessions Court also viewed the Prosecution Case with suspicion because the names of the eyewitnesses did not appear in the panchnama.
The High Court found this reasoning unsustainable. It asked how, after killing one brother, the Accused could have waited four hours before killing the other, when both incidents took place near the deceased’s house and observed that the Trial Judge had not even considered the plausibility of such a gap.
Digestive Timings Versus Evidence
The Supreme Court endorsed the High Court’s view and was unimpressed by the Defence’s reliance on the point. Senior counsel for the Appellants had sought to raise a doubt by relying on the inconclusive digestive process; the Court remarked that this argument was, on the facts, “very difficult to digest”.
The Court noted that the eyewitness accounts placed the incident at about 1:00 AM, that food had been prepared around 10:00 PM and dinner taken thereafter and that the two killings followed one another in quick succession. It held that where acceptable eyewitnesses speak clearly about the time of the incident, no safe conclusion can rest on the probabilities of digestive timings and that such an inference cannot, in any event, be the sole ground for rejecting oral evidence. The Court reiterated that the credibility of direct ocular evidence overrides a medical inference.
Relationship of the Eyewitnesses to the Deceased
The Court further held that the trustworthy testimony of the deceased’s wives could not be discarded merely because they were related to the victims. The Sessions Court, in the view of the Supreme Court, had ignored the direct ocular evidence and relied on insignificant material that had no real bearing on the outcome, thereby diluting the credibility of the direct evidence.
Absence of Eyewitness Names in the Inquest Report
The Court also rejected the Trial Court’s reliance on the omission of the eyewitnesses’ names from the inquest panchnama. Referring to Section 174 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, now Section 194 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, the Court reiterated that an inquest is confined to ascertaining the apparent cause of death and whether it was unnatural or suspicious.
Relying on its earlier decision in Radha Mohan Singh alias Lal Saheb v. State of U.P., the Court observed that particulars of the assault, the identity of the assailants and the names of eyewitnesses need not be recorded in an inquest report. Accordingly, the testimony of an eyewitness cannot be discarded because the name does not appear in that report.
Conclusion
The Judgment is a useful reminder of three propositions. First, a medical or physiological inference, particularly one described as inconclusive, cannot outweigh a clear and credible account of the occurrence given by eyewitnesses. Second, relationship with the deceased does not by itself make a witness unreliable; the question remains whether the testimony is trustworthy. Third, an inquest report has a limited statutory purpose and gaps in it cannot be converted into grounds for disbelieving eyewitnesses.
For the defence, the decision signals that challenges to the time of death based on stomach contents or digestion will need firm medical foundation and cannot succeed on probabilities alone. For the Prosecution, it reaffirms that consistent, trustworthy eyewitness evidence, supported by homicidal findings in the autopsy and recovery of the weapon, carries decisive weight.
The Appeal was dismissed and the Appellants were directed to surrender forthwith.
Shomdeepta Chanda
Associate
The Indian Lawyer & Allied Services
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