“Criminals are not born but made. The human potential in everyone is good and so, never write off any criminal as beyond redemption. This humanist fundamental is often missed when dealing with delinquents, juvenile and adult. Indeed, every saint has a past and every sinner a future,” the court said on July 2.

The court noted that the allegations related to the murder were attributed to a co-accused. Against the man appearing before the court, the allegation was that after learning about the murder, he drove his nephew to Pathankot instead of informing the police.

Justice Sandeep Sharma directed murder accused Sanjeev Kumar’s release on furnishing a bail bond of Rs 2 lakh along with two local sureties of the like amount. (Image enhanced using AI)

Prosecution’s case

According to the prosecution, the victim and the nephew married several months before the incident without informing her family. After learning about the marriage and the wife’s pregnancy, her family decided to perform customary marriage ceremonies and formally bid her farewell on September 24, 2025.

On September 23, the same year, however, the woman went missing. The police subsequently recovered her half-burnt body from a forest near Bariya in Una district after receiving information from a forest guard. Her mother alleged that her husband and his uncle murdered their daughter.

The prosecution alleged that the couple got into an argument over her pregnancy and money and killed her.

According to the prosecution, the husband later informed his uncle about the murder and requested him to drop him at Pathankot so that he could rejoin his Army unit in Jammu.

‘No evidence’ of murder conspiracy

The court said that the prosecution’s own case did not suggest that the petitioner had prior knowledge of any plan of murder. It held that the fact of merely opposing the relationship could not, by itself, establish criminal liability. It said that even if the petitioner failed to inform the police after learning about the crime,  it was insufficient to infer a prior meeting of the minds or abetment.

Speedy trial

• When a crime is committed, a variety of factors are responsible for making the offender commit the crime.
• Those factors may be social and economic, maybe the result of value erosion or of parental neglect; may be, because of the stress of circumstances, or the manifestation of temptations in a milieu of affluence contrasted with indigence or other privations.
• If the state or any prosecuting agency, including the court concerned, has no wherewithal to provide or protect the fundamental right of an accused to have a speedy trial as enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution, then the state or any other prosecuting agency should not oppose the plea for bail on the ground that the crime committed is serious.

• Article 21 of the Constitution applies irrespective of the nature of the crime.
• If during the pendency of the trial, the petitioner is permitted to be incarcerated in jail for an indefinite period during trial, it would not only amount to pre-trial conviction, but would also violate Article 21 of the Constitution of India, which also guarantees a speedy trial.
• The prosecution has proposed to examine 53 witnesses, but till date, not even a single prosecution witness has been examined, meaning, considerable time is likely to be consumed in the conclusion of the trial.

The man was directed to furnish a bail bond of Rs 2 lakh along with two local sureties of the like amount.