In the very famous case of Priyadarshani Matoo (Santosh Kumar Singh v State through CBI ) circumstantial evidence had a very important role to play in the conviction of the accused for rape and murder of the lady. Initially when the case was being tried in the Additional Session Judge court, the accused was acquitted on the basis of lack of direct evidence presented by the investigation authorities. However, the judgment was overruled by Delhi High Court based on the critical analysis of the circumstances proved beyond reasonable doubt and the evidence was unquestionable that Singh was responsible for rape and murder of the victim.
In the Nitish Katara case , (Vikas Yadav v. State of U.P) the deceased Nitish Katara and Bharti yadav (sister of the accused Vikas and Vishal Yadav) studied together in IMT, Ghaziabad and were having alleged relationship. However, this relationship was not up to the liking of the brothers. On February 16, 2002, at a common friend’s wedding in Shastri Nagar the accused brothers came and took Nitish outside for a conversation. After 3 days, burnt body of Nitish Katara was…show more content… Prosecution case rests on circumstantial evidence. As the case depends on circumstantial evidence, at the outset the well established principals governing the appreciation of evidence in a case dependent upon circumstantial evidence may be born in mind. Briefly the principals are that each circumstance relied upon by the prosecution must be established by cogned, succinct and reliable evidence , that the circumstance relied upon must be such as cannot be explained or any hypothesis except the guilt of the accused ,in other words the circumstances must be often incriminating character. All the proof circumstance must provide a complete change, no link in which must be missing and they must unequivocally point to guilt of the accused and exclude any hypothesis consistent with his