India, April 20 -- The Supreme Court has acquitted a man accused in the 2017 rape and murder of a school headmistress in Assam, holding that there was no evidence to connect him to the crime and that even his arrest was "shrouded in a cloud of doubt".

A bench of justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta dismissed the Assam government's appeal and upheld the Gauhati High Court's decision to acquit Moinul Haque of charges of rape and murder.

Going a step further, the court also set aside his conviction under Section 201 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for allegedly destroying evidence, even though Haque had not challenged that part of the verdict.

".the very arrest of the accused-respondent in the present case is shrouded in a cloud of doubt...