Nearly two decades after a banker was found dead and investigators accused his wife of plotting the crime with her purported lover, the Supreme Court has exonerated the woman, holding that the mere production of telephone call records cannot substitute the “substantive proof” required to sustain a conviction for murder.
A Bench comprising Justices Sanjay Karol and Prasanna B. Varale upheld the acquittal of Monika Kiran Suryawanshi, declining to revive the charges of murder and criminal conspiracy against her. She had been accused of orchestrating the murder of her husband, Kiran Suryawanshi, a bank employee, in February 2007 over an alleged extramarital affair.
‘Motive is weak’
“Mere production of telephone records does not substitute substantive proof of an illicit affair leading to murder. Thus, the motive is inherently weak and insufficient to anchor a conviction for murder,” the Bench observed while dismissing appeals filed by the Maharashtra government against the Bombay High Court’s 2010 judgment acquitting the accused.
According to the prosecution, Monika, who had married Kiran in 2001, was allegedly involved in an extramarital relationship with her neighbour, Prakash. It was alleged that the two, along with another associate, conspired to murder Kiran. The prosecution claimed that Monika first administered sedatives to her husband in the form of tablets and injections before he was fatally assaulted with a grinding stone inside the couple’s residence.
The prosecution further alleged that the body was wrapped in plastic and a bedsheet before being transported on a motorcycle for disposal. The alleged attempt to dispose of the body was thwarted when a police constable on patrol noticed two men carrying a suspicious bundle on a motorcycle. On closer inspection, the constable spotted a human foot protruding from the bundle, leading to the recovery of Kiran’s body and the immediate arrest of the two men.
In 2008, a sessions court convicted Monika and the two co-accused of murder and sentenced them to imprisonment for life. The Bombay High Court, however, set aside the conviction in 2010, holding that the circumstantial evidence relied upon by the prosecution was too weak to uphold a murder conviction.
‘No cogent evidence’
The judgment, authored by Justice Varale, observed that, “at its highest”, the prosecution’s evidence merely suggested “a one-sided infatuation” on the part of the co-accused. There was “no cogent evidence”, the court noted, to show that Monika reciprocated those feelings or harboured any hostility towards her husband.
The court also poked holes in the prosecution’s reliance on the call records to establish Monika’s alleged role in the conspiracy. While the prosecution claimed that Monika had telephoned Prakash after ensuring her husband had fallen asleep, the Bench noted a “total absence of any outgoing call” from Monika’s mobile phone to Prakash’s on the night of the incident. Instead, the call records reflected incoming calls from Prakash’s number to Monika’s phone, lending support to the defence case that Kiran had inadvertently left his mobile phone at home and was calling from Prakash’s handset. The court, therefore, held that the FIR’s allegation that Monika had summoned Prakash was “unsupported by the digital trail”.
The court also found a fundamental inconsistency in the prosecution’s case. While it was alleged that Kiran had been bludgeoned to death in his bed, the post-mortem report revealed that no blood was found on the mattresses, bed sheet or pillow inside the house. “This physical impossibility speaks volumes and entirely contradicts the prosecution’s fundamental narrative that deceased Kiran Suryawanshi was brutally bludgeoned to death in his bed,” the judgment noted.
Critical of probe
The Bench was equally critical of the manner in which the investigation had been conducted. A significant part of the prosecution’s case rested on the alleged recovery of a blood-stained grinding stone, a syringe and certain articles of clothing at Monika’s instance. The court, however, found that these recoveries suffered from serious procedural infirmities, thereby diminishing their evidentiary value.
“The prosecution’s case against the accused for murder and conspiracy, resting entirely on circumstantial evidence, suffers from vital lacunae, specifically the failure to establish a motive… The chain of circumstances is broken, and the hypothesis of guilt is not exclusively established,” the Bench added.
Accordingly, the court upheld the High Court’s judgment acquitting Monika of the charges of murder and criminal conspiracy. However, it affirmed the conviction of Prakash and another co-accused under Section 201 of the Indian Penal Code for causing the disappearance of evidence.
The judges pointed out that the evidence conclusively established that the two men were intercepted while transporting Kiran’s body on a motorcycle during the early hours of February 15, 2007. Their apprehension at the spot left no doubt that they had participated in an attempt to tamper with the evidence. However, since both men had already undergone the one-year sentence awarded for the offence under Section 201 of the Indian Penal Code, the court found no reason to interfere with the High Court’s order directing their release.
Published – July 14, 2026 07:27 pm IST
