A criminal conviction cannot stand on assumptions about married life. With that clear message, the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court overturned the murder conviction of a woman accused of killing her husband, ruling that simply being married does not mean a spouse must have been present at the scene of death.
The Court acquitted Selvi, who had earlier been sentenced to life imprisonment by a trial court in Virudhunagar for the alleged murder of her husband Chellapandi. The judges concluded that the case against her rested entirely on fragile circumstantial evidence that failed to establish even the basic facts necessary to sustain a conviction.
At the centre of the prosecution’s case was a simple but sweeping claim: since Selvi and her husband were married and lived in the same house, she must have been present when he died and should therefore explain how it happened. When she could not offer such an explanation, investigators treated the silence as a sign of guilt.
The High Court rejected that line of reasoning.
The Bench emphasised that marriage alone cannot be used to presume constant presence inside a home. If the prosecution wished to rely on such a claim, it had to produce witnesses or evidence showing that the woman was indeed with her husband shortly before his death.
Without that proof, the judges said, the foundation of the prosecution’s argument simply collapsed.
The ruling also examined the attempt to rely on Section 106 of the Indian Evidence Act, a provision often invoked when certain facts are believed to be especially within the knowledge of the accused. The Court clarified that this section cannot be used as a shortcut to shift the burden of proof onto the accused.
Unless the prosecution first establishes the basic circumstances of the crime, the provision cannot be used to draw adverse conclusions from an accused person’s inability to explain events.
The case against Selvi revolved around an allegation that she had been involved in an extramarital relationship and that her husband had confronted her about it. Investigators claimed that in the early hours of September 29, 2017, while he was asleep, she dropped a grinding stone on his head, causing fatal injuries.
However, the High Court found that the prosecution could establish little more than a possible motive linked to marital discord.
The rest of the case began to unravel during the trial. Several key witnesses, including the father of the deceased, turned hostile. The alleged extra-judicial confession attributed to Selvi could not be proved. Even the “last seen together” theory — often used to connect an accused to a death — had no supporting evidence.
With the chain of circumstances incomplete, the Court observed that the conviction appeared to have been based almost entirely on an improper reliance on Section 106 of the Evidence Act.
Such an approach, the judges said, effectively shifted the responsibility of proving guilt away from the prosecution — something the law does not permit.
Finding significant gaps in the evidence and no reliable proof connecting Selvi to the killing, the Court set aside the trial court’s verdict and acquitted her of all charges, bringing an end to a case that had rested largely on presumption rather than proof.
