Supreme Court Acquits Stepfather in Child Murder Case, Holding Circumstantial Chain Incomplete and Section 27 Inapplicable

Case Name: Rohit Jangde v. The State of Chhattisgarh
Citation: 2026 INSC 162
Date of Judgment/Order: 17 February 2026
Bench: Hon’ble Mr. Justice Sanjay Kumar and Hon’ble Mr. Justice K. Vinod Chandran

Held: The Supreme Court held that in a case resting purely on circumstantial evidence, the prosecution must establish a complete chain of circumstances leading only to the hypothesis of guilt, and where the last seen theory collapses, the recovery under Section 27 of the Evidence Act is legally infirm, and the remaining circumstances merely raise suspicion without conclusively proving guilt, the accused is entitled to benefit of doubt; accordingly, the conviction of the stepfather for the murder of a six-year-old child was set aside.

Summary: The case arose from the alleged murder of a six-year-old girl, where the stepfather was convicted on three principal circumstances—(i) last seen together theory through a neighbour, (ii) recovery of burnt bones and skull allegedly at the instance of the accused under Section 27 of the Evidence Act, and (iii) DNA matching of certain recovered remains with the biological parents of the child; the Supreme Court scrutinized inconsistencies in the arrest memo and timeline, noting interpolation in arrest dates and a delay in lodging the missing complaint, which undermined the prosecution’s last seen theory, especially since the accused was in custody during the relevant period the Court further held that the so-called Section 27 disclosure statement was made when the accused was not in police custody, rendering it inadmissible under Section 27, though the recovery could be considered as conduct under Section 8 of the Evidence Act but only as a weak corroborative circumstance regarding DNA evidence, only vertebrae and teeth recovered from the canal matched with the DNA profile of the biological parents, while other recovered remains did not match, and such partial matching established death but not the authorship of the crime; the Court emphasized that suspicion, however strong, cannot replace proof beyond reasonable doubt, and in the absence of a complete chain of circumstances, conviction could not be sustained.

Decision: The Criminal Appeal was allowed; the judgment of the Trial Court convicting the accused and the High Court judgment affirming the conviction were set aside; the accused was directed to be released forthwith, if not required in any other case; pending applications, if any, stood disposed of.