33 quality of police investigation”. Besides inefficiency, the members of public complained of rudeness, intimidation, suppression of evidence, concoction of evidence and malicious padding of cases…..’ 38. Echoing the same sentiment in its Report No.239 in March, 2012, the Law Commission of India observed that the principal causes of low rate of conviction in our country, inter alia, included inept, unscientific investigation by the police and lack of proper coordination between police and prosecution machinery. Despite passage of considerable time since these gloomy insights, we are dismayed to say that they remain sadly true even to this day. This is a case in point. A young boy in the first flush of youth was cruelly done to death and the wrongdoers necessarily had to be brought to book for the injustice done to him and his family. However, the manner in which the police tailored their investigation, with complete indifference to the essential norms in proceeding against the accused and in gathering evidence; leaving important leads unchecked and glossing over other leads that did not suit the story that they had conceived; and, ultimately, in failing to present a cogent, conceivable and fool-proof chain of events pointing to the guilt of the appellants, with no possibility of any other hypothesis, leaves us with no option but to extend the benefit of doubt to the appellants. The higher principle of ‘proof beyond reasonable doubt’ and more so, in a case built on circumstantial evidence, would have to prevail and be given priority. It is high time, perhaps, that a consistent and dependable code of investigation is devised with a mandatory