Alibi

Alibi means “elsewhere” and that word is used for convenience when an accused takes recourse to a defence line that when the occurrence took place he was so far away from the place of occurrence that it is extremely improbable that he would have participated in the crime, Binay Kumar Singh v. State of Bihar, (1997) 1 SCC 283: 1997 SCC (Cri) 333.  It is a defence resorted to where the party accused, in order to prove that he could not have committed the crime with which he is charged, offers evidence that he was in a different place at the time the offence was committed. The word “alibi”, a Latin expression, means and implies in common acceptation “elsewhere”: it is a defence based on the physical impossibility of participation in a crime by an accused in placing the latter in a location other than the scene of crime at the relevant time, shortly put, the presence of the accused elsewhere when an offence was committed. Distance thus would be a material factor in the matter of acceptability of the plea of alibi, Munshi Prasad v. State of Bihar, (2002) 1 SCC 351: 2002 SCC (Cri) 175.  Literal meaning of alibi is “elsewhere”. In law this term is used to express that defence in a criminal prosecution, where the party-accused, in order to prove that he could not have committed the crime charged against him, offers evidence that he was in a different place at that time. The plea taken should be capable of meaning that having regard to the time and place when and where he is alleged to have committed the offence, he could not have been present. The plea of alibi postulates the physical impossibility of the presence of the accused at the scene of offence by reason of his presence at another place, Subhash Chand v. State of Rajasthan, (2002) 1 SCC 702: 2002 SCC (Cri) 256.