The Supreme Court, recently, acquitted two men convicted of a 2013 abduction and murder in Karnataka, holding that the “last seen together” theory could not sustain a conviction once the discovery evidence relied upon as corroboration was found to be inadmissible. The judgment is an occasion to set out what the doctrine is, how much it proves, and why it so often falls short.
The Supreme Court, in April 2026, set aside the conviction of two men sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2013 abduction and murder of a woman in Karnataka, holding that a conviction for so grave an offence could not be founded on the solitary circumstance that they were last seen in the company of the deceased, once the discovery evidence offered to corroborate it was found to be legally unsustainable.
A Bench of Justice J. B. Pardiwala and Justice K. V. Viswanathan was hearing appeals filed by Anand Jakkappa Pujari and Mahadev Sidram Hullolli against a judgment of the Karnataka High Court, which had in December 2021 affirmed their conviction under sections 302, 364, 404 and 201 read with section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, provisions that now correspond to sections 103(1), 140(1), 315 and 238 read with 3(5) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.
The prosecution case, resting wholly on circumstantial evidence, was that the deceased’s brother had a financial dispute with her and conspired with the appellants and another accused to abduct and kill her, and the body was burnt thereafter to destroy evidence.
Two circumstances were pressed against the appellants. The first was that they were seen with the deceased in a car shortly before she went missing, and the second was a set of disclosure statements said to have been made in police custody, on the strength of which the prosecution claimed to have discovered the places of killing and burning.
The Court found that it was the prime accused who had first led the police to those places. The appellants were taken to the same spots later, and since the police had already found them through the prime accused, the appellants pointing to them again revealed nothing new. Their statements therefore disclosed no fresh fact admissible under section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872.
With that corroboration excluded, the only circumstance surviving against the appellants was the last seen theory, which the Court held could not by itself carry a murder conviction, observing that the prosecution case “may be true” but had not been shown to be that which “must be true”. The appeals were allowed and the appellants were acquitted in Anand Jakkappa Pujari @ Gaddadar v. The State of Karnataka, 2026 INSC 417.
The acquittal turns on a doctrine that recurs across criminal trials in India, and the questions that follow set out its scope and its limits.
What is the ‘last seen together’ theory in Indian law?
The last seen together theory is a rule of circumstantial reasoning, and not a statutory offence or an independent ground of conviction. It proceeds on a simple inference. Where an accused is shown to have been with the deceased shortly before the death, and the gap between that sighting and the death is short, the closeness in time and place may point to the accused as the person responsible.
The theory finds no express mention in the Evidence Act, being a judicial construction that draws its force from section 7 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, which makes relevant the facts that form the occasion or cause of a fact in issue.
Its place in the law is, by design, a modest one. The circumstance shows that the accused had the opportunity to commit the offence, because he is proved to have had access to the deceased at the material time. It does not, on its own, show that he actually caused the death. That distinction, between having the opportunity and being the author of the crime, is what governs how much weight the circumstance can bear.
Can a person be convicted on ‘last seen’ evidence alone?
As a general rule there cannot be a conviction solely on the basis of the last seen together theory. The circumstance, taken by itself and without corroboration, is weak evidence, and a conviction for a serious offence cannot safely rest on it.
The reason lies in what the circumstance does and does not prove. That two persons were seen together does not rule out the possibility that a third person intervened, nor that the death occurred in some way unconnected with the accused, and a court that convicted on opportunity alone would be putting suspicion in the place of proof.
This was the reasoning that produced the acquittal in the present case. Once the discovery evidence collapsed, the prosecution was left with the last seen circumstance and nothing more, and the Court declined to convert a single circumstance into proof of murder.
It held that the prosecution must travel the full distance from a case that “may be true” to one that “must be true”, and that the two are far apart. The Court also recorded that the appellants, who were charged as accomplices, had no motive of their own, the alleged financial grievance belonging to the prime accused, so that their mere presence with him could not establish a shared intention to kill.
When does the ‘last seen’ theory carry decisive weight?
The last seen theory carries decisive weight only where the gap between the sighting and the death is so short that no one else could have committed the crime. The rule is not an absolute bar, and it would be a misreading to treat it as one. The governing statement of the principle is found in State of U.P. v. Satish, (2005) 3 SCC 114. There the Supreme Court held that the theory comes into play where the interval between the time the accused and the deceased were last seen together and the time the deceased was found dead is so small that the possibility of anyone else being the author of the crime becomes impossible.
The mechanism is one of exclusion by proximity. Where the accused was the last and only person with the victim, and the death followed so quickly that no third party could realistically have intervened, the circumstance carries a force it does not otherwise have. The position reverses as the gap widens. A long interval between the sighting and the death leaves room for others to have intervened, and the court must then ask whether some third person could have committed the offence, so that the wider the gap, the weaker the circumstance becomes.
How does section 27 of the Evidence Act work?
Section 27 allows the prosecution to use a custodial statement only where it leads the police to a fact they did not already know. The provision, set out in section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, is an exception to the general bar, contained in the two preceding sections, on statements made by an accused in police custody. It admits only that part of a custodial statement which leads to the discovery of a fact, and only the part relating distinctly to that fact.
The provision now corresponds to the proviso to section 23 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023. A fact can be discovered only once, and once it has been discovered, a later statement pointing to the same fact discovers nothing further.
This requirement was what defeated the prosecution in Anand Jakkappa Pujari @ Gaddadar v. The State of Karnataka. On the investigating officer’s own testimony, the prime accused had first led the police to the place where the deceased was killed and the place where her body was burnt. The appellants were taken to the same spots afterwards.
Since the police had already found those places through the prime accused, the appellants pointing to them again revealed nothing new, and the discovery of those locations was therefore the prime accused’s alone.
The Court held that what the prosecution had was a joint claim by all four accused to the same discovery, with nothing on record to show which accused had said what, so that the safeguards built into section 27 were absent.
The Court was careful to add that a joint or simultaneous disclosure is not, as a matter of principle, inadmissible, a position it traced to its earlier ruling in State (NCT of Delhi) v. Navjot Sandhu, (2005) 11 SCC 600.
A joint statement remains admissible where the statements of different accused lead to the discovery of different facts from different places, because each such discovery carries its own guarantee of truth. It fails only where, as here, several accused are said to have jointly discovered a single fact that the police already possessed. On that reasoning, the discovery of the two places could not be used against the appellants.
What is the role of section 106 of the Evidence Act in a ‘last seen’ case?
Section 106 places on the accused the burden of explaining what happened, but only after the prosecution has first proved that he was last with the deceased. The provision, set out in section 106 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872, now section 109 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023, provides that when a fact is especially within the knowledge of a person, the burden of proving that fact lies on him.
In a last seen case it supplies what may be called the doctrine’s second stage. Once it is established that the accused was the last person with the deceased, what happened next is treated as a matter within his special knowledge, and his failure to offer any plausible explanation can become an additional link that helps complete the chain of guilt.
The provision carries an important limitation, and it is frequently the limitation on which an acquittal turns. Section 106 does not shift the primary burden of proof, which stays on the prosecution throughout, and it cannot be used to relieve the prosecution of its own duty.
The burden moves to the accused to explain himself only after the prosecution has first proved its foundational case. A prosecution cannot prove a weak or doubtful “last seen”, and then demand that the accused account for the death, because until the foundational fact is firmly proved, the burden never shifts at all.
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This is why section 106 had no part to play in the present case. The Court never reached the stage at which the burden could move to the appellants.
The foundational last seen circumstance was itself weak, and once the discovery evidence was excluded it stood entirely uncorroborated, so the prosecution had not crossed the threshold that Section 106 assumes. The provision shows, precisely by not applying here, that the reverse burden is the consequence of a proved case and not a substitute for one.
What does the judgment establish about circumstantial evidence?
The judgment establishes that a conviction on circumstantial evidence stands only where every circumstance is proved and the circumstances together form a complete chain pointing to guilt alone.
That test was most authoritatively stated in Sharad Birdhichand Sarda v. State of Maharashtra, (1984) 4 SCC 116. It requires that the circumstances from which guilt is inferred be fully established, that they be consistent only with the guilt of the accused, and that together they form a chain so complete that it leaves no reasonable explanation other than guilt.
Every link in that chain must be proved, and a chain with a missing or broken link cannot sustain a conviction, however strong the suspicion against the accused.
In the present case the chain was incomplete. The discovery evidence had been excluded, and the last seen circumstance stood alone, with no motive and no other material connecting the appellants to the killing.
The principle the judgment reaffirms is therefore a familiar one, but no less consequential for being familiar, that suspicion, however strong, cannot take the place of proof, and that the distance between a case that “may be true” and one that “must be true” is the distance the prosecution is required to travel in every criminal trial.
Case title: Anand Jakkappa Pujari @ Gaddadar v. The State of Karnataka, 2026 SC.
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