Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus
A Bench of the Supreme Court comprising Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice P. Sathasivam spoke of the application of the maxim ‘falsus in uno falsus in omnibus‘ in India in the case of Dalbir Singh v. State of Haryana, 2008 who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his uncle, Ram Partap, although all the other persons who were accused of murder along with him were acquitted because there was a dearth of credible evidence against them.
Upholding the conviction against Dalbir Singh, the Court said, “Even if major portion of evidence is found to be deficient, residue is sufficient to prove guilt of an accused, notwithstanding acquittal of large number of other co-accused persons, his conviction can be maintained.”
The Applicability of the Maxim ‘Falsus in Uno Falsus in Omnibus’
The Supreme Court said:
The maxim general acceptance or come to occupy the status of rule of law. It is merely a rule of caution. All that it amounts to is that in such cases testimony may be disregarded, and not that it must be disregarded. The doctrine merely involves the question of weight of evidence which a Court may apply in a given set of circumstances, but it is not what may be called “a mandatory rule of evidence”. (See Nisar Alli v. The State of Uttar Pradesh: AIR 1957 SC 366).
… The doctrine is a dangerous one specially in India for if a whole body of the testimony were to be rejected, because witness was evidently speaking an untruth in some aspect, it is to be feared that administration of criminal justice would come to a dead-stop.
The witnesses just cannot help in giving embroidery to a story, however, true in the main. Therefore, it has to be appraised in each case as to what extent the evidence is worthy of acceptance, and merely because in some respects the Court considers the same to be insufficient for placing reliance on the testimony of a witness, it does not necessarily follow as a matter of law that it must be disregarded in all respects as well. The evidence has to be sifted with care. The aforesaid dictum is not a sound rule for the reason that one hardly comes across a witness whose evidence does not contain a grain of untruth or at any rate exaggeration, embroideries or embellishment. (See Sahrab s/s Belli Nayata and another v. The State of Madhya Pradesh: (1972) 3 SCC 751, and Umar Ahir and others v. The State of Bihar: AIR 1965 SC 277).
As observed by this Court in State of Rajasthan v. Smt. Kalki and another: AIR 1981 SC 1390, normal discrepancies in evidence are those which are due to normal errors of observations, normal errors of memory due to lapse of time, due to mental disposition such as shock and horror at the time of occurrence and these are always there however honest and truthful a witness may be. Material discrepancies are those which are not normal and not expected of a normal person.
Courts have to label the category to which a discrepancy may be cateogrised. While normal discrepancies do not corrode the credibility of a party’s case, material discrepancies do so.”
(This extract has been edited.)
