25 45. Mr. Singh next argued that the prosecution did not prove any prior relationship between the accused. Neither was any material produced to suggest that the three accused knew each other or had any prior plan, agreement or common intention to commit a robbery at the place of incident. The prosecution admittedly had access to the CDRs of the accused persons and could have demonstrated the fact whether there was a relationship, which there was none. Either way the CDR evidence was crucial to the prosecution and the lack of explanation as to why it was not a part of the investigation casts doubts on the investigation and its fairness. It was stated that while the official investigation claimed that no CDRs were accessed (PW-31’s statement is relied on for this), the unofficial investigation (or, that material kept away from court) conducted by DW-1 admitted having access to and analysing the CDRs. This aspect lends credence to the defence that the present investigation was improper and that it would be unsafe to rely upon it to render findings of the accused’s guilt. Reliance is placed on Suresh Sakharam Nangare v. State of Maharashtra18 in this regard. 46. It was further argued that while convicting Neha under Section 302 read with 34 IPC, the courts below failed to appreciate that there is no material to suggest that she had any common intention with the co-accused persons, much less a common intention to commit murder. Further, the nature of Neha’s conviction highlights that no weapon was recovered from her; she did not suffer any injury and none of her personal items of belonging were recovered from the crime scene. 47. Supplementing Ms. Prakash’s arguments regarding PW-10, it was argued that the testimony of this chance witness was unreliable due to gaps and contradictions. PW-10’s cross-examination revealed that his examination-inchief was an improvement over his statement under Section 161 CrPC – the witness had embellished his version of the incident, such as the fact of the 18 (2012) 9 SCC 249 (para 21)

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