Ghaziabad: After spending seven years in jail on accusations of killing his mother, a Loni man was acquitted on Wednesday after every prosecution witness spoke against the case presented by the police.Judge Lokesh Varun said that all the eyewitnesses examined by the prosecution presented hostile evidence in court, giving statements contrary to the prosecution’s case. “The totality of the witnesses’ statements disproves the prosecution’s case and the charges. Therefore, the accused deserves to be acquitted of the charges levelled against him, receiving the benefit of the doubt,” he said.The matter stems from an FIR lodged on Feb 20, 2019, by Yogesh Kumar, accusing his younger brother, Manoj, of killing their mother, Ramvati Devi, by hitting her on the head with a gas cylinder the previous night. Manoj denied the claims and said his mother was sick and suffered a fall after slipping, because of which she sustained a head injury. He also alleged the police were framing him in a false case. After a preliminary investigation, police registered a case of murder against Manoj and arrested him the next day. A gas cylinder, a blood-soaked pillow, and other items from the crime scene were seized, and a chargesheet was filed in the court.During the trial, the prosecution presented 11 witnesses, including family members and neighbours, all of whom denied the accusations. In addition, the plaintiff, Yogesh, retracted the statement he made during the filing of the complaint, and alleged the report “was dictated to him by the police”. “This weakens the prosecution’s credibility, as the plaintiff himself admitted that the accused did not murder his mother. The plaintiff’s testimony in the examination-in-chief also makes it clear that this witness is not an eyewitness to the prosecution’s case,” the court observed. The prosecution’s story also remained uncorroborated by four neighbours and two of the accused’s uncles, who said the mother and the son used to live together and the son was responsible for taking care of his mother.
