India, July 12 -- The Bombay High Court has acquitted a 38-year-old man who was serving a life sentence for the 2013 murder of his female friend, whose dismembered body was dumped in plastic bags at different locations in Chembur. The court held that the prosecution failed to prove the murder charge beyond reasonable doubt and ordered his release after he had spent nearly 12-and-a-half years in prison.

A division bench of justices Manish Pitale and Shreeram Shirsath set aside the murder conviction of Prabhakar Shetty, observing that the prosecution had failed to establish the complete chain of circumstantial evidence necessary to sustain a conviction.

"The prosecution has failed to establish, beyond reasonable doubt, several material in...