PRAYAGRAJ, Dec. 31 -- Thirty-eight years after being sentenced to life, the Allahabad high court has acquitted three men accused of murder, holding that the case was one of a "blind murder" and that the crime had been committed by someone else. Acquitting the accused, a division bench of Justice JJ Munir and Justice Sanjiv Kumar observed that the prosecution had "utterly failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt" and that the trial court had not appreciated the evidence in the correct perspective, arriving at a conclusion "based on conjectures and improper appreciation of evidence". According to the prosecution, the informant's brother was allegedly thrashed and beaten to death by the accused on July 8, 1982. It was claimed that one of the accused inserted a lathi into the deceased and that the informant was threatened with death if he lodged an FIR or informed the police. An FIR was registered at the Soraon police station in Prayagraj, and investigation was initiated against 11 accused. On April 13, 1987, the court of the additional sessions judge convicted them under sections 147 and 302/149 of the IPC and sentenced them to life imprisonment. The conviction was challenged before the high court. During the pendency of the appeals, eight of the appellants died, resulting in the abatement of proceedings in their cases. The appeals of the three surviving accused -- Amrit Lal, Harish Chandra and Kallu -- were heard on merits. Examining the testimony of the deceased's brother and uncle, the court found "unexplained gaps", including the absence of any clarity as to who informed the uncle about the alleged assault. The court observed that if an unknown person had informed the uncle about the incident, such a person would ordinarily have conveyed the information directly to the deceased's brother, if he intended it to reach him. It further noted that from the time the informant was alerted to the incident to the time he gathered villagers and reached the spot would have taken at least an hour. "It is highly improbable that 11 assailants, if they intended to murder the deceased, would continue beating him for such a long duration and yet cause only 10 injuries," the court said. The court also questioned the conduct of the informant, noting that a person of ordinary prudence, upon learning that his brother was being assaulted, would not proceed unarmed or take a longer route to the place of occurrence. This conduct, the court said, raised serious doubts about the prosecution version. A key factor weighed by the court was the contradiction between ocular and medical evidence. While the informant and his uncle claimed that a lathi had been inserted into the deceased, the post-mortem report recorded no such injury. There was no allegation that the doctor who conducted the post-mortem was negligent. "In case of conflict between direct evidence and medical evidence, the ocular version is to be accepted unless the medical evidence completely rules it out. In the present case, the medical evidence completely rules out the direct evidence," the court held, noting that the injuries found on the body did not support the prosecution's version. Holding that the deceased was murdered by someone else during the dark hours of the night, the Allahabad high court acquitted the three surviving appellants in its order dated December 18....