Mumbai: Observing that the entire investigation process comes under suspicion and seems to be done to implicate the accused in the case, a sessions court on Tuesday acquitted Mohammed Shaikh who has spent more than five years in jail on charges of robbing and murdering railway commuter Niraj Jaiswar found fatally injured in the luggage compartment of a local train at CSMT in 2021.
The court acquitted Shaikh of charges of robbery, murder and destruction of evidence. “…prosecution has miserably failed to establish the chain of the circumstances showing the involvement of the accused in the crime and no compliance has been done regarding the CCTV footage retrieved from the railway stations….,” Additional Sessions Judge R S Aradhye said.
The court found inconsistencies in the timing shown in the CCTV material. According to one part of the prosecution case, the accused was allegedly seen cleaning a knife between 10.07 pm and 10.55 pm, while other material suggested that the deceased was seen alive at Kurla railway station around the same period and even later. The court observed that the prosecution’s own material indicated that “since from 10.07 pm to 10.21 pm, when the accused was found while cleaning the knife… the deceased was alive.
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The judge also noted that the CCTV footage was not shown to family members of the deceased, family members of the accused, or any independent witness for identification. Merely recognising persons on the basis of CCTV footage, without following a reliable identification procedure, was held insufficient.
The defence, led by advocate Wahab Khan, submitted that the accused was falsely implicated.
The case was registered at CSMT railway police station. According to the prosecution, on March 29, 2021, the local train arrived at CSMT from Panvel at about 10.47 pm, where a man was found unconscious and injured in the luggage compartment. Before railway staff and police could attend to him at CSMT, the train departed again towards Panvel. The deputy station manager at CSMT alerted Wadala railway station, where police constable Ranjit Mane entered the luggage compartment, found the injured man and shifted him to
Sion Hospital. The man was declared dead before admission.
The prosecution alleged that Shaikh robbed Jaiswar of his mobile phone and wallet, assaulted him with a knife on the chest, stomach, waist and hands, and later attempted to destroy evidence by cleaning the blood-stained knife and removing bloodstains from his clothes. It relied mainly on CCTV footage allegedly collected from Govandi, Kurla and Dockyard Road railway stations, footage from a tea stall near GTB station, recovery of a knife, clothes, wallet and identity documents, and forensic reports.
The court, however, held that the prosecution case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence and failed the settled test for conviction on such evidence.
The court found that there was “no direct eyewitness” who saw the accused and deceased board the same train or travel together. It also noted that no witness had established a “last seen” circumstance connecting Shaikh with Jaiswar immediately before the death.
The court also found significance in the fact that articles related to the crime, including a knife, were allegedly recovered from the house of the accused’s brother, but the brother was neither examined as a witness nor was his statement recorded. The judge said he would have been the best witness to establish Shaikh’s knowledge, conscious possession or control over the recovered articles.
On the electronic evidence, the court found serious deficiencies. Except for a certificate issued in relation to the tea stall footage, the prosecution had not produced the mandatory certificates for CCTV footage retrieved from Govandi, Kurla and Dockyard Road railway stations or for the copying of data from pen drives into DVDs.
The medical evidence established that Jaiswar’s death was unnatural and caused by shock due to multiple stab injuries. However, the court held that this did not connect Shaikh to the crime. The doctor who examined the knife could not give absolute confirmation that it was the weapon used in the offence, particularly because blood grouping on the knife was inconclusive and there was no conclusive DNA report.
The court also relied on the forensic report showing that no blood was detected on the cloth allegedly used by Shaikh to clean the knife. It said this admission by the investigating officer “goes to the root of case in respect of proving the guilt of accused.”
