New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has acquitted two convicts, Yashpal and Banarasi Das, who were serving life sentences in a nearly 28-year-old murder case. Finding serious discrepancies in the prosecution evidence, the court gave both men the benefit of doubt and set aside the sentence awarded by the trial court in 2002. The verdict has also raised questions over years of delay in the judicial process and old pending cases.
A bench of Justice Navin Chawla and Justice Ravinder Dudeja said the prosecution had failed to prove the complete chain of circumstantial evidence against the accused. The case related to the murder of Harichand in the Sultanpuri area on October 13, 1998. Police had found his blood-soaked body at the spot. The court also did not rely on the statement of a witness described as an eyewitness in the case.
The prosecution had cited as key evidence the recovery of the sword allegedly used in the murder at the instance of Banarasi Das and bloodstains found on Yashpal’s clothes. The High Court raised doubts over the procedure and circumstances of these recoveries. The court said it appeared unnatural that Yashpal would still be wearing the allegedly bloodstained clothes at the time of his arrest five days after the incident. There were also discrepancies in the statements related to the recovery of the sword.
The trial court had convicted both men of murder on January 31, 2002, and sentenced them to life imprisonment. Delivering its judgment on November 5, 2026, the High Court set aside both the conviction and the sentence.
The case has also drawn attention to the status of old pending trials in the Delhi High Court. According to available data, thousands of criminal cases in the court have been pending for more than a decade. In this context, the need to speed up the judicial process and ensure time-bound examination of evidence is again under discussion.
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