Acquittal is not a certificate of innocence: HC

MUMBAI: An acquittal is not a certificate of innocence to the accused, the Bombay high court said on Wednesday, and dismissed a petition filed by a Pune resident seeking compensation of Rs5 lakh, alleging he was falsely implicated by the police in various criminal cases, in which he was subsequently acquitted.

“An acquittal merely shows that the accused is not found guilty or the prosecution has failed to prove the charges levelled against the accused,” the division bench of Justice VM Kanade and Justice PD Kode said. “It is not a certificate of innocence to the accused and a mere acquittal does not entitle the accused to seek compensation from the state,” the bench said.

The petitioner, Sunil Gavali, was arrested by the Pune crime branch in April 2012 in a chain-snatching case. Later, some other arrests were made and provisions of the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), 1999, were applied against the gang, including Gavali.

The special MCOCA court, however, discharged Gavali from the charges levelled under the Act and remanded the matter to a magistrate court.

His counsel, Shekhar Jagtap submitted that provisions of the stringent penal law were slapped on Gavali though there was no prior criminal case against the petitioner. The sanctioning authority instead took into consideration 10 subsequent cases in which the petitioner was falsely implicated, and later came to be acquitted, Jagtap said.

The judges, however, said that an erroneous decision would not entitle the accused person to seek compensation, for which the accused must show that the decision of the prosecuting authority was malicious