The Punjab and Haryana High Court has acquitted four men who had been given the death penalty by a trial court in the alleged rape and murder of two minor sisters in Haryana’s Sonipat in 2021. The court said the prosecution failed to prove their connection with the offences beyond reasonable doubt.

A division bench of justices Anoop Chitkara and Ramesh Chander Dimri on Wednesday set aside the convictions and sentences of Arun, Phool Chand, Dukhan and Ram Suhag, and ordered their immediate release subject to furnishing personal bonds. The bench said the prosecution had proved that the two girls were sexually assaulted, but had failed to link any of the four accused to the crime.

The case relates to the deaths of two sisters aged 13 and 12 in August 2021. Their mother had initially told doctors and the police that the girls had been bitten by a snake. They were taken to a hospital in Delhi, where one was declared brought dead and the other died a few hours later. Three days later, on August 9, 2021, the mother filed another complaint alleging that the four men, who were neighbours, had entered their room, raped the girls and forcibly administered poison to them. A case was then registered against the four men, who were later awarded the death sentence by a trial court in Sonepat in November 2023.

The high court pointed to inconsistencies in the mother’s versions. While her complaint on August 9 named all four accused, in her statement before a judicial magistrate the next day she said she knew the name of only one accused and not the others. The bench said, “It is common sense that if the victims’ mother had known the names of the accused on August 9, 2021, when she made a written complaint to police, there was no reason for her to explicitly state to the Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) the very next day that she did not know the names of any of the accused except one,” and called it a “material contradiction”. During the trial, the woman turned hostile and did not support the prosecution’s case, denying even the statement she had made before the magistrate.

The court said the medical evidence showed that the two girls had been subjected to sexual assault. However, it found that the scientific evidence did not show the genetic material of any of the accused on the victims’ vaginal swabs or on the parna. “The absence of evidence creates a strong doubt about the involvement of any of the accused in the commission of rape,” the bench said. It also held that the presence of semen on the parna recovered after disclosure statements by the accused was not proved, and that the cloth was not a relevant piece of evidence for implicating any of them.

The bench said that after examining the full record, “the picture that emerges is hazy as to how these four persons were implicated”, especially in a case that had resulted in the death penalty. It said, “An analysis of the entire evidence not only creates doubt about the involvement of any of the accused but also indicates the absence of scientific evidence against them. Given the above, although the prosecution is able to establish the commission of the offence of rape against both the victims, but it has failed to connect any of the accused as the perpetrator of rape.”

The court added that there was no legally admissible evidence linking any of the accused to rape or to the murder of the girls by forcibly administering poison.

In its closing observations, the court said, “Why would a mother who lost her two minor daughters, and why would two adult brothers who lost their two minor sisters, spare the real culprits?” It added that the fact that they said the accused shown to them were not involved raised the possibility that “the real culprits were never arraigned as accused”. With that, the high court set aside the convictions and sentences on all charges and acquitted all four men, saying they were entitled to the benefit of the doubt.

– Ends

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India Today Web Desk

Published On:

Aug 27, 2026 23:03 IST