Calcutta, Nov. 24: A lifer husband was acquitted by the high court today because his illiterate wife’s dying declaration had been recorded in English.

“A dying declaration should be taken in mother tongue as the expression of a dying person can be changed while translating the declaration into any other language,” a division bench of Justice P.N. Sinha and Justice P.S. Dutta said.

Fatik Let, a resident of Kalua village in Birbhum, was thus absolved of the charges of killing his wife Minati in 1992.

An employee of a private company, he got married in 1986. On August 26, 1992, Minati was admitted to Rampurhat Subdivisional Hospital with 80 per cent burns. She died the same day and a police officer took her dying declaration.

Minati’s brother Badal Let lodged a police complaint alleging that Fatik, his father Gandhi and brother Swapan set her ablaze.

All three were held, but the police failed to frame charges against Gandhi and Swapan.

On March 4, 2003, the Rampurhat sessions judge convicted Fatik. The judge said though Minati poured kerosene on herself, Fatik set her on fire. The judge cited the dying declaration in support of his observation.

Fatik challenged the verdict in the high court.

The high court found that the conviction was entirely based on the dying declaration.

“The victim’s brother and the complainant, Badal Let, had said before the court that he could not speak to his sister at the hospital as she was unconscious. Only the dying declaration that the victim made before the police was submitted before the trial court. That, too, was written in English. But dying declarations should be written in the victim’s mother tongue. Minati was an illiterate woman. So, she couldn’t have made the statement in English,” the bench said today.

The trial court had failed to prove Fatik’s guilt, it said, and ordered his release from jail.

Lawyers said it is not laid down in any book of law that a dying declaration should be written in one’s mother tongue. But that is the norm. “It is not a rule but a norm. The officer who took Minati’s dying declaration was obviously ignorant about the norms,” said advocate Rabishankar Chatterjee.