PRAKASH NISHAD @ KEWAT ZINAK NISHAD v. STATE OF MAHARASHTRA [SANJAY KAROL, J.] 29. A ‘chawl’ is a group of tenements clustered together, very small in size and densely populated. It’s an inexpensive accommodation, temporary for some, permanent for others. Living in the same chawl, cannot be, in the attending facts of no one having identified with certainty the exact house/room of the appellant, a circumstance pointing to the guilt of the appellant. As is evident from the decisions referred (supra), for a circumstance to be established, there shouldn’t be doubt; it should not leave room for the possibility that, not the appellant against whom the circumstance is sought to be proved but someone else, may have done the said crime. 30. None of the witnesses have deposed that it was at the instance of the appellant that the prosecutrix left the house, nor has anyone deposed to the effect of having seen the appellant and the prosecutrix together at any point in time; Appellant was not even a visitor to the house of PW 1. They have no relationship, be it of whatever nature. All that is stated is that after having dinner prosecutrix left home, and PW 3 states that he thought she may have gone to the neighbour’s house to watch TV. With this being the case, last seen theory, does not come into play. Although argued before us, the Trial Court has correctly not considered the same to be a circumstance of consequence, in either direction. The Circumstance Disclosure Statement of the appellant and the Recovery of incriminating articles 165 A B C D E 31. Conjoint reading of the testimonies of PW 12 and PW 13 further renders the prosecution case to be inherently improbable, if not self-contradictory and impossible on this circumstance. 32. Unlike PW 5, who is categorical about having seen the bloodstained nicker in the house of the appellant, PW 12 does not disclose such fact. Undisputedly, both these witnesses together visited the alleged house of the appellant only once, i.e., on 13.6.2010. It is a matter of record that police recovered only one nicker belonging to the prosecutrix, which was recovered at the time of the second search conducted on 16.6.2010, which renders the recovery by PW 13 in the presence of PW 9 to be extremely doubtful, specifically when the search and subsequent recovery of incriminating articles is refuted. 33. There is yet another contradiction which bears significance in the attending facts and that being the time of the seizure of the articles F G H