News Citation : 2026 LN (HC) 89 | 2026:CGHC:6222-DB
February 04, 2026 : The High Court of Chhattisgarh has set aside the conviction of a woman who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the deaths of her two minor sons, holding that the prosecution failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt and relied almost entirely on an inadmissible dying declaration.
A Division Bench of High Court of Chhattisgarh, comprising Justice Sanjay K. Agrawal and Justice Arvind Kumar Verma, allowed Criminal Appeal No. 1233 of 2019 filed by Dhaneshwar Sahu, who had been convicted in 2019 by a sessions court in Koria district for offences under Sections 302 (two counts) and 309 of the Indian Penal Code.
The case arose from an incident dated May 11, 2017, in which the prosecution alleged that the appellant jumped into a well after tying her two sons, Bharat aged about four years and Shatrughan aged about four months, to her waist. Both children drowned, while the woman survived. The trial court treated her statement recorded by an Executive Magistrate as a dying declaration and convicted her on that basis.
The High Court, however, found this approach legally unsustainable. It noted that under Section 32 of the Indian Evidence Act, a dying declaration is admissible only when the maker of the statement dies. Since the appellant survived, her statement could not be treated as substantive evidence and at best could be used only for limited purposes of corroboration or contradiction under Sections 157 or 155 of the Evidence Act.
Relying on a consistent line of Supreme Court precedents, the Bench held that a statement recorded under such circumstances, even if made before a Magistrate, cannot by itself form the basis of conviction in the absence of independent corroborative evidence. The Court further observed that there was no eyewitness account of the incident and no material on record to establish that the deaths of the two children were homicidal in nature. The postmortem reports merely recorded drowning as the cause of death without indicating whether it was homicidal, suicidal, or accidental.
The Bench also rejected the prosecution’s attempt to rely on minor health issues allegedly suffered by the appellant as a motive, stating that such circumstances were insufficient to infer that a mother would intentionally cause the death of her own children.
In view of these findings, the Court acquitted the appellant of all charges and set aside the judgment of conviction and sentence. As she was already on bail, the Court directed that she need not surrender, though her bail bonds would remain in force for six months in terms of Section 437A of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Case Reference : Criminal Appeal No. 1233 of 2019, Dhaneshwar Sahu v. State of Chhattisgarh; Counsel for the Appellant: Mr. Basant Dewangan, Advocate; Counsel for the Respondent/State: Mr. Ashish Shukla, Additional Advocate General, Mr. Rahul Tamaskar, Government Advocate, and Mr. H.A.P.S. Bhatia, Panel Lawyer.
