The Delhi HC’s decision came on an appeal filed by the accused against the trial court’s February 2004 verdict, by which he was held guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Delhi High Court Tuesday acquitted a man in an 18-year-old kidnapping and murder case, observing that the prosecution has not been able to prove each of the links in the chain of circumstances pointing “unmistakably” to the guilt of the accused. A bench of Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Vinod Goel also set aside the trial court order holding Deepak Sarna guilty and awarding him life-term for kidnapping, killing and destruction of evidence in the case. “…the prosecution has not been able to prove each of the links in the chain of circumstances, or that the proved circumstances point unmistakably to the guilt of the appellant (Sarna). In any event, the trial court erred in convicting Sarna for the substantive offences… when there was no charge framed against him to that effect,” the HC bench observed. Sarna’s advocates — Pramod Kumar Dubey and Rohit Priya Ranjan — contended that the other two accused have been acquitted of the charges, and the acquittal has not been challenged by the state. Hence, the charge had to fail against their client as well, they contended. “There was no charge against Sarna alone for the substantive offence punishable under IPC sections 302 (murder), 364 (kidnapping) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence). No move was made by the prosecution to amend the charges to that effect,” the counsel argued. The HC’s decision came on an appeal filed by the accused against the trial court’s February 2004 verdict, by which he was held guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. As per the prosecution, the accused and two others entered into a criminal conspiracy on October 28, 2000, to abduct and murder a businessman.