Skull Superimposition Technique For Identification Of Dead Body Not Infallible: Supreme Court Acquits Murder Accused
Case: S. Kaleeswaran vs State
Coram: CJI UU Lalit and Bela M. Trivedi
Case No.: CrA 160 OF 2017
Court Observation: “In Pattu Rajan v. State of Tamil Nadu4 , this Court has explained that though identification of the deceased through superimposition is an acceptable piece of opinion evidence, however the courts generally do not rely upon opinion evidence as the sole incriminating circumstances, given its fallibility, and the superimposition technique cannot be regarded as infallible. In the present case, since the super-imposition report was not supported by any other reliable medical evidence like a DNA report or post-mortem report, it would be very risky to convict the accused believing the identification of the dead body of the victim through the super-imposition test. It is true that in the case based on circumstantial evidence, if the entire chain is duly proved by cogent evidence, the conviction could be recorded even if the corpus is not found, but when as per the case of prosecution, the dead body of the victim was discovered from the place shown by the accused, it is imperative on the part of the prosecution to prove that the dead body or the skeleton found at the instance of the accused was that of the victim and of none else.”
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Keywords
Skull Superimposition Technique, Identification Of Dead Body
