A Thane court has acquitted a 36-year-old woman in connection with the 2018 murder of Kabir Ahmed Lashkar, ruling that the prosecution failed to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt despite strong suspicions.

Delivering the verdict on Monday, Principal District and Sessions Judge S.B. Agrawal observed, "Suspicion, however strong, cannot take the place of proof." The court noted that the circumstantial evidence produced by the prosecution was insufficient to conclusively establish the involvement of the accused, Ruma Begam Anwar Hussain Lashkar, in the crime.

According to the prosecution, Lashkar allegedly killed Kabir by strangling him with a cloth, attacking his private parts with a sharp object, and assaulting him with a brick. His decomposed body was discovered wrapped in a sheet inside a locked house in Thane’s Sainagar area on March 19, 2018.

Lashkar was traced to Bengaluru after the incident. The prosecution claimed that the two had been in a relationship between 2016 and 2018, which had deteriorated over marriage-related disputes. Kabir had previously worked with the accused at a bicycle store in Bengaluru before shifting to Thane.

The case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence, including mobile call detail records (CDRs) and the testimony of the landlord and his wife. The prosecution argued that the accused had travelled from Bengaluru to Thane and was last seen with the deceased.

However, the court pointed out several shortcomings in the investigation and prosecution’s case—most notably the absence of a test identification parade, a delay of nearly six years before the landlord identified the woman in court, and the lack of any direct forensic link connecting the accused to the crime scene. While human blood was found on various items including a knife, brick, and bedsheet, none of it was directly traced back to the accused.

Summing up the findings, Judge Agrawal noted that even if the evidence was accepted at face value, it merely established that the accused was seen once with the deceased and that her mobile number had interacted with his. This, he ruled, was not sufficient to convict her under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code.

Accordingly, the woman was acquitted of all charges.