Case Title: Umesh Chandra v. State of Uttarakhand
The Supreme Court ruled that Test Identification Parade could not be repeated until the prosecution was successful in identifying the accused.
Justices Navin Sinha and R. Subhash Reddy's bench noted that unless additional facts and circumstances support the identification, the test identification parade's results alone cannot serve as the basis for a conviction. It reiterated that a test identification parade conducted under Section 9 of the Evidence Act is only corroborative evidence in criminal prosecution.
The accused in this case were convicted by the Trial Court after being identified in a test identification parade (TIP). They argued before the Supreme Court that the conviction based on the TIP is unsustainable because no TIP has been proven to have been held per the law. It was also claimed that repeated TIPs were held only after the accused were 'identified.'
While considering the appeal, the court noted that the prosecution's case is based solely on identification in the TIP.
"A test identification parade under Section 9 of the Evidence Act is not substantive evidence in a criminal prosecution but is only corroborative evidence. The purpose of holding a test identification parade during the stage of investigation is only to ensure that the investigating agency prima facie was proceeding in the right direction where the accused may be unknown or there was a fleeting glance of the accused. Mere identification in the test identification parade therefore cannot form the substantive basis for conviction unless there are other facts and circumstances corroborating the identification.", according to the court.
The prosecution, the court added, bears the burden of proving that the TIP was held per the law. Only after the prosecution has established prima facie that a valid TIP was held, does the question of considering any objections to the same arise. "There is nothing for the accused to disprove if the prosecution has failed to establish that a TIP was properly held by questioning witnesses to the same," it said.
In this case, the court noted that a Magistrate conducted the TIP but was not examined, and the prosecution provided no explanation.
"There cannot be repeated TIPs till such time that the prosecution is successful in obtaining identification of the accused. We find it extremely disturbing that both the Trial Court and the High Court did not go into this aspect at all to satisfy themselves if any TIP had been proved to have been held at all and that too per the law," the bench made the following observation while acquitting the accused.