Sniffer dog`s evidence not relevant, says SC

Sniffer dog`s evidence not relevant, says SC
New Delhi, Nov 03:
The Supreme Court has held that in a criminal case evidence purportedly collected using a sniffer dog cannot form the basis for convicting an accused.

The conviction, if any, on the basis of the leads given by a sniffer dog can at best be relied upon if other circumstantial evidence corroborate it, a bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and H S Bedi ruled.

The apex court passed the ruling while dismissing an appeal filed by the UP Government challenging the acquittal of Ramal Balak and Shiv Balak who were earlier sentenced to death for the gangrape of a girl in Jamal Nagar village of Unna district on November 17, 1992.

The accused were sentenced to death by a sessions court which relied upon the tracking down of the accused by a sniffer dog and certain other extra-judicial confessions made by Shiv Balak.

However, the Allahabad High Court set aside the conviction and acquitted the accused on the reasoning that the circumstantial evidence including the evidence of the police dog was not sufficient to uphold the conviction.

Aggrieved by the high court`s ruling, the State filed the appeal in the apex court during which it sought to rely on the fact that the dog pressed into service after the murder, trailed the accused from the scene of crime.

Bureau Report

Your comment(s) on this article
This is a shocking judgement. For ages now all over the world sniffer dogs have played a major role in tracking down criminals. In fact, it is almost always never difficult to get all the evidences of a case when the criminal has been identified. The lead given by the dogs if said to be irrelevant, then it could be made out that it was a case of barking up the wrong tree and every other evidence collected may be claimed by a bright defence lawyer to be a case of superimposition of the crime upon an innocent. This judgement requires a revision by a larger Bench. - K.Venugopal - Mumbai