New Delhi: Tightening the evidence law, the Supreme Court has held that credible eyewitness account of a crime involving violence was trustworthier than medical experts' opinion.

The ruling was given by a Bench comprising Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice C K Thakker while upholding a Madhya Pradesh trial Court order convicting three persons - Komal Singh, Manni and Dharkole - in a murder case.

With this the apex Court set aside the order of the High Court, which had acquitted the three accused holding that the eyewitness account was at variance with the medical evidence.

Justice Pasayat, writing for the Bench, said it would be erroneous to accord "undue primacy to the hypothetical answers" of medical experts to exclude the eye-witnesses' account, which had to be tested independently and not treated as the "variable" keeping the medical evidence as "constant".

"It is trite that where the eye-witnesses' account is found credible and trustworthy, medical opinion pointing to alternative possibilities is not accepted as conclusive," he said.

The Bench said eye-witnesses' account would require a careful independent assessment and evaluation for their credibility which should not be adversely prejudged making any other evidence, including medical evidence, as the sole touchstone for the test of such credibility.

In the present case, the High Court ignored the relevant aspects and unnecessarily put emphasis on certain aspects which did not have any foundation, it said.