Cuttack: Orissa High Court has ruled that a trial court can go ahead with conviction even in the absence of a body in a murder case if it is established that the person was intentionally killed.

The court said: "In the absence of the dead body there must be direct or circumstantial evidence leading to the inescapable conclusion that the person has died and that the accused are the persons who had committed the murder."

The court ruling came while considering an appeal challenging a trial court judgment nearly 26 years ago.

Police registered a case of kidnapping and murder against four persons at Biramaharajpur in December 1989 under sections 302 (murder), 264 (kidnapping) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code although they could not trace the body.

In January 1992, the Court of Sessions Judge, Balangir, acquitted the quartet, but found them guilty under Section 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and sentenced them to one year in prison.

Three of them challenged the verdict in the high court that same year, but their pleas had languished for all these years till the appeals were partially allowed on March 8.

The high court felt that if the prosecution was successfully provided clinching evidence and cogent and satisfactory proof that the victim had died of homicide, the absence of body will not, by itself, be fatal to a murder charge.

"Failure of the prosecution to assemble such evidence will, however, result in failure of the most essential requirement in a case involving a charge of murder," the Single Jusge Bench of Justice S.K. Sahoo ruled.

Since the body was absent and there was no material before the court that the allegedly murdered person was dead, the trial court had given benefit of doubt to the accused persons.

"After assessing the evidence, I am of the humble view that that there is no infirmity in the finding of the trial court in giving benefit of doubt to the accused persons of the charge of the murder so also of the charges of kidnapping and causing disappearance of evidence," Justice Sahoo observed.

Justice Sahoo, however, confirmed conviction of one of the accused for voluntarily causing hurt and acquitted another accused for the same charges. The case of another accused was abetted as he had died since then.