78 conclusive and of such tendency that they should be such as to exclude every hypothesis but the one proposed to be proved. This view was followed later in Tufail v. State of Uttar Pradesh59 and Ram Gopal v. State of Maharashtra60. All these and other decisions were revisited in the three-judge bench decision in Sharad Birdi Chand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra61 and the court enunciated a set of principles that every court trying criminal cases entirely based on circumstantial evidence had to follow. 150. The conclusions recorded by this court in Sarda were listed in Para 152 (which were characterised in Para 153 as “five golden principles”). They are extracted below: “(1) the circumstances from which the conclusion of guilt is to be drawn should be fully established. It may be noted here that this Court indicated that the circumstances concerned 'must or should' and not 'may be' established. There is not only a grammatical but a legal distinction between 'may be proved' and 'must be or should be proved' as was held by this Court in Shivaji Sahabrao Bobade & Anr v State of Maharashtra where the following observations were made: "Certainly, it is a primary principle that the accused must be and not merely may be guilty before a court can convict and the mental distance between 'may be' and 'must be' is long and divides vague conjectures from sure conclusions." (2) The facts so established should be consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused, that is to say. they should not be explainable on any other hypothesis except that the accused is guilty, (3) the circumstances should be of a conclusive nature and tendency. (4) they should exclude every possible hypothesis except the one to be proved, and (5) there must be a chain of evidence so complete as not to leave any reasonable ground for the conclusion consistent with the innocence of the accused and must show that in all human probability the act must have been done by the accused. These five golden principles, if we may say so, constitute the panchsheel of the proof of a case based on circumstantial evidence.” 151. These principles have stood the test of time, and the evidence in all criminal cases, have been evaluated in their light, throughout the country. In 59 (1969) 3 SCC 198 60 AIR 1972 SC 656 61 (1984) 4 SCC 116