Rai Sandeep @ Deepu vs State Of Nct Of Delhi on 7 August, 2012
In this regard, Hon'ble Supreme Court in Rai Sandeep v.
State (NCT of Delhi), (2012) 8 SCC 21, has held as under:
"22. In our considered opinion, the "sterling witness" should be of a
very high quality and caliber whose version should, therefore, be
unassailable. The court considering the version of such witness
should be in a position to accept it for its face value without any
hesitation. To test the quality of such a witness, the status of the
witness would be immaterial and what would be relevant is the
truthfulness of the statement made by such a witness. What would
be more relevant be the consistency of the statement right from the
starting point till the end, namely, at the time when the witness
makes the initial statement and ultimately before the court. It should
FIR No. 19/14 (Parveen Singh)
Judge Spl. Court (POCSO Act)
PS Gokalpuri 7 of 16 ASJ01/NE/KKD: 19.09.2017
be natural and consistent with the case of the prosecution qua the
accused. There should not be any prevarication in the version of
such a witness. The witness should be in a position to withstand the
cross examination of any length and howsoever strenuous it may be
and under no circumstance should give room for any doubt as to the
factum of the occurrence, the persons involved, as well as the
sequence of it. Such a version should have corelation with each
and every one of other supporting material such as the recoveries
made, the weapons used, the manner of offence committed, the
scientific evidence and the expert opinion. The said version should
consistently match with the version of every other witness. It can
even be stated that it should be akin to the test applied in the case of
circumstantial evidence where there should not be any missing link
in the chain of circumstances to hold the accused guilty of the
offence alleged against him. Only if the version of such a witness
qualifies the above test as well as all other such similar tests to be
applied, can it be held that such a witness can be called as a 'sterling
witness' whose version can be accepted by the court without any
corroboration and based on which the guilty can be punished. to be
more precise, the version of the said witness on the core spectrum
of the crime should remain intact while all other attendant
materials, namely oral, documentary and material objects should
match the said version in material particulars in order to enable the
court trying the offence to rely on the core version to sieve the other
supporting materials for holding the offender guilty of the charge
alleged.