MUMBAI, 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 incriminating circumstances which constituted the essential links in the chain of circumstantial evidence against the appellant for the offence of murder," the bench said. However, the court upheld Shetty's conviction for destruction of evidence and the two-year sentence imposed for that offence, which he has already served. According to the prosecution, the case came to light on October 29, 2013, when assistant sub-inspector Hanumant Patil of Chembur police station noticed a crowd near Charai Lake during a patrol. Locals informed him that two men had arrived in an autorickshaw, dumped a large plastic bag into the water and fled. Police recovered the bag and found the torso of a woman, estimated to be between 25 and 30 years old. The following day, another black plastic bag containing severed legs was recovered near Trombay Jetty. Investigators later traced the autorickshaw allegedly used to dispose of the torso, leading to Shetty's arrest on November 5, 2013. The victim was identified as Kanti Shetty, a Sakinaka resident who had been reported missing. The prosecution claimed that after his arrest, Shetty led police to Sai Baba Nagar in Chembur East, where the victim's head was recovered. Police also claimed that Kanti was killed after repeatedly insisting on marriage, leading to frequent quarrels between the two, and that the knife allegedly used in the murder was recovered at Shetty's instance. Following a trial in which the prosecution examined 25 witnesses, a Mumbai sessions court on December 8, 2020 convicted Shetty of murder and destruction of evidence. Holding that the chain of circumstantial evidence had been proved beyond reasonable doubt, the trial court sentenced him to life imprisonment for murder and two years' imprisonment for destroying evidence....