A division bench of Justice Bilal Nazki and Justice A R Joshi acquitted Uttam Lokhande, Parmeshwar Lokhande and Vaman Lokhande — all farmers and residents of Solapur district— on March 2.

According to the prosecution, the accused are relatives of the deceased Hanumant and the complainant Chandrakant Naiknavare. As per the First Information Report (FIR) registered with the Pandarpur police taluka police station, on April 27, 2000, Naikanavare had gone to Parmeshwar’s house to invite him for his brother’s marriage. Since Parmeshwar was not there, he gave the card to his wife. But the invitation card was returned to Naikanavare saying that he should give it personally to Parmeshwar. Thereafter, he forgot to deliver the card.

Accordingly, the accused and his family did not attend the wedding which took place on April 26, 2000. After the ceremony, when Naiknavare, his cousin Hanumant and few others had gathered near a village temple, another accused Vaman abused Naiknavare for not giving the card. Thereafter, Vaman and Hanumant who had gone to seek explanation from them got into a altercation. During the altercation, he was allegedly murdered by the accused. The prosecution examined eight witnesses in the case. The complainant and his sister Champabai, who had intervened in the fight to save Hanumant, were also examined.

However, defence lawyer P R Arjun Wadkar argued before the High Court that “conviction in this case was misplaced as the entire case is based on the evidence of the eye witnesses.” He added that the eyewitnesses “did not disclose true and complete event before the court at the time of trial or before the police at the time of inquiry”.

Wadkar argued that the accused were also injured in the incident. This was not told by the eyewitnesses and not mentioned in the police chargesheet also, he contented. However, the doctor who had conducted the postmortem of Hanumant’s body in the court had accepted that he had also examined the three accused on the same night as they were injured in the incident. This proved that the death of the accused was not actually due to the fight with the accused but there were other possibilities, he said.