SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court, which includes Ladakh, annulled the conviction and two-year jail sentence of a government employee, stating the necessity for robust evidence and acknowledging the significant difference between ‘could be true’ and ‘must be true.’
Mansoor Ahmad Malik, an employee, had his two-year jail term overturned by the High Court. The court, led by Justice Vinod Chatterji Koul, allowed Malik’s appeal, stating the prosecution failed to prove the demand for illegal gratification. Malik, initially sentenced in connection with a 2009 corruption case, was found not guilty under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Justice Vinod Chatterji Koul, leading the bench, declared, “The prosecution has failed to prove clearly and explicitly the demand for illegal gratification.” The court said that “suspicion, no matter how strong, cannot and must not be permitted to take place of proof.”
Highlighting the judicial duty in criminal cases, the bench remarked, “The large distance between ‘may be’ true and ‘must be’ true must be covered by way of clear, cogent, and unimpeachable evidence produced by the prosecution before an accused is condemned as a convict.” The court stressed the importance of maintaining a vital distance between mere conjectures and sure conclusions through dispassionate judicial scrutiny.
“If the facts and circumstances of a case so demand, then the benefit of the doubt must be given to the accused. It clarified that a reasonable doubt is “not an imaginary, trivial, or a merely probable doubt but a fair doubt based upon reason and common sense,” the court asserted.
Mansoor Ahmad Malik, previously sentenced to two years in jail in FIR No.26/2009 of Police Station VOK, expressed relief as the court found him not guilty of an offence under Section 5(1)(d) read with Section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
