Supreme Court overturns loss of life sentence of Chennai man accused for rape and homicide

The Supreme Court on Wednesday (October 8, 2025) put aside the conviction and loss of life sentence of Dashwanth, a Chennai-based engineering graduate, accused of raping and killing a seven-year-old lady in Mugalivakkam in 2017. The Court stated the prosecution had “miserably failed” to determine his guilt past an inexpensive doubt and located severe lapses within the investigation.

A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol, and Sandeep Mehta acknowledged that acquitting an accused in such a “heinous offence” might trigger “societal misery,” however stated the courtroom couldn’t be swayed by “ethical conviction or conjecture.”

“We can’t ignore or bypass the elemental precept of prison jurisprudence that the prosecution is duty-bound to show the guilt of the accused past an inexpensive doubt. However, regrettably, the prosecution has miserably failed to take action within the prompt case,” it stated.

The Court famous that though it might have remanded the matter to the trial courtroom for a contemporary trial, it was extra applicable to determine the case on deserves because the accused had been in custody for practically eight years owing to “protracted proceedings of trial and enchantment.”

The Court additionally pulled up the police for failing to gather essential CCTV footage, noting that such conduct warranted an “opposed inference” in opposition to the prosecution. “Failure to gather the info from the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) of the CCTV digital camera creates a grave doubt on the bonafides of the Investigation Agency. It appears that the Investigation Officers had been deliberately attempting to display screen the reality from being introduced on document and wash their arms off the matter, by making the appellant, a scapegoat,” the judgment authored by Justice Mehta stated.

“We have minutely gone via the judgments of the High Court in addition to the trial Court and discover that whereas coming to the respective conclusions concerning the guilt of the appellant, the trial Court and the High Court glossed over these patent infirmities and loopholes within the case of the prosecution,” the courtroom stated.

‘Lopsided trial’

The Bench additionally discovered that the trial  was performed in a “lopsided method and with out due deference to the rules of honest trial.”

It famous that the accused had been denied authorized illustration till  the fees had been framed, undermining his proper to an efficient defence. “In a case the place an accused is going through fees for offences which carry capital punishment, this constitutional mandate turns into much more sacrosanct, and it’s the obligation of the Court in addition to the State to make sure that the accused will not be prejudiced or disadvantaged of a good alternative of defending himself in a case the place he could also be awarded loss of life penalty,” it stated.

The case pertained to the kidnapping, sexual assault, and homicide of a seven-year-old lady who went lacking from her house complicated in Mugalivakkam on February 6, 2017. The Chennai police arrested Dashwanth, a resident of the identical constructing, alleging that he had lured the kid away with a canine earlier than sexually assaulting and killing her. 

The Chengalpattu Sessions Court sentenced him to loss of life on February 19, 2018, and the Madras High Court upheld it on July 10, 2018.