Madan Kanhar was given a 2008 life sentence for the murder of a 20-year-old woman. The woman had gone to collect firewood in a jungle near her village in Phulbani. Her mother found her dead in the jungle on April 12, 2005, with injuries on the head and other parts of the body. Kanhar, a resident of the same village, was held primarily as the deceased had picked up a quarrel with him a few days ago. The judges said “in the absence of unimpeachable and irrefutable evidence, the benefit of doubt must necessarily go to the appellant, as no conviction can be sustained on mere suspicion or weak circumstantial evidence” in the Orissa high court ruling on March 7. The bench of justices Sangam Kumar Sahoo and Chittaranjan Dash in its March 7 judgment set aside Kanhar’s life sentence given to him in 2008 by a sessions judge in PhULBani district. In 2008, Kanhar had appealed in HC, which granted him bail in 2019.