Pendakwa Raya v Mahesh Gole Tamang (Nepal)

Case Significance

Illustrates that an incomplete investigation — a failure to secure a material witness and to properly prove key exhibits such as CCTV — can leave the prosecution short of a prima facie case in a murder trial, entitling the accused to acquittal at the close of the prosecution case.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam is a murder trial that ended in acquittal at the close of the prosecution case because an incomplete investigation left a fatal gap in the evidence. The accused, a foreign national, was charged under section 302 of the Penal Code with the murder of another man at a security guard post at an industrial-area records-management premises in Shah Alam, over the night of 1 to 2 January 2021. The accused claimed trial through a Nepali interpreter, and the prosecution called eight witnesses before closing its case.

The court identified serious deficiencies in the prosecution's case. The CCTV recording relied upon remained marked only as an identification document and had not been properly proved and admitted as evidence. More significantly, the investigation had been incomplete: the prosecution had failed to call a material witness, a foreign national who had been detained at a detention centre on an immigration matter, because the investigating officer had not taken the necessary steps with the Immigration Department to secure that witness's attendance in court. The court held that this failure created a real gap in the prosecution's case. It nonetheless declined to draw an adverse inference under section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950 against the prosecution, reasoning that the failure was attributable to an incomplete investigation rather than to any attempt to suppress or conceal evidence.

Having evaluated the whole of the prosecution evidence at its maximum, the court found that the prosecution had failed to establish a prima facie case, and it discharged and acquitted the accused. The judgment illustrates that an incomplete investigation — including a failure to secure a material witness and to properly prove key exhibits — can leave the prosecution unable to cross the prima-facie threshold, entitling the accused to an acquittal without being called to defend.