“30. A survey of the decisions would show that the principles can be culled out as follows:
a. Conviction of a person can be made solely on the basis of a dying declaration which inspires confidence of the court;
b. If there is nothing suspicious about the declaration, no corroboration may be necessary;
c. No doubt, the court must be satisfied that there is no tutoring or prompting;
d. The court must also analyse and come to the conclusion that imagination of the deceased was not at play in making the declaration. In this regard, the court must look to the entirety of the language of the dying declaration;
e. Considering material before it, both in the form of oral and documentary evidence, the court must be satisfied that the version is compatible with the reality and the truth as can be gleaned from the facts established;
f. However, there may be cases where there are more than one dying declaration. If there are more than one dying declaration, the dying declarations may entirely agree with one another. There may be dying declarations where inconsistencies between the declarations emerge. The extent of the inconsistencies would then have to be considered by the court. The inconsistencies may turn out to be reconciliable.
g. In such cases, where the inconsistencies go to some matter of detail or description but is incriminatory in nature as far as the Accused is concerned, the court would look to the material on record to conclude as to which dying declaration is to be relied on unless it be shown that they are unreliable;
h. The third category of cases is that where there are more than one dying declaration and inconsistencies between the declarations are absolute and the dying declarations are irreconcilable being repugnant to one another. In a dying declaration, the Accused may not be blamed at all and the cause of death may be placed at the doorstep of an unfortunate accident. This may be followed up by another dying declaration which is diametrically opposed to the first dying declaration. In fact, in that scenario, it may not be a question of an inconsistent dying declaration but a dying declaration which is completely opposed to the dying declaration which is given earlier. There may be more than two.”
i. In the third scenario, what is the duty of the court? Should the court, without looking into anything else, conclude that in view of complete inconsistency, the second or the third dying declaration which is relied on by the prosecution is demolished by the earlier dying declaration or dying declarations or is it the duty of the court to carefully attend to not only the dying declarations but examine the rest of the materials in the form of evidence placed before the court and still conclude that the incriminatory dying declaration is capable of being relied upon?”
Jagbir Singh v. State of NCT Delhi, (2019) 8 SCC 779
