There's been plenty of discussion about the Plucked Fruit quest and the fact that it can't really be resolved satisfactorily.  I agree with that, but I just noticed that the quest also fails on one additional level: the journal. I tried a couple of different options, and if you do not blame the guy who actually stole the fruit, your journal will report that you framed the innocent guy who was originally blamed and tied to the post. This happens even if you specifically lie to the chief and say you do not know who did it (after you've given back the fruit).

 

I mean, this quest is such a mess. It looks like a dreadful oversight that was not checked properly. As far as I can tell, there is no way to give the fruit back to the guy who buried it and then concoct a story to the chief. That would be the sensible thing to do, but it's not possible, as far as I can tell.

Yeah, this quest lacks nuance.

Your quest is to find stolen fruits, that’s is the quest objective and is impossible to complete the quest without handing stolen fruits to the Mataru.

thats mainly the problem. You can’t just leave the fruits with the Kuaru. Sure, Mataru won’t accept your koiki as a replacement, but why can’t I give stolen fruit to Mataru, and give Kuaru some of my fruit to get seeds from? 

Second part of the quest is fine: roparu is disliked by everyone in the village, and is accused of stealing the koiki fruit. You can either prove him innocent (and sentence the Kuaru) or not, and roparu takes the fall. As the second happens whenever you confirm false suspicions, or don’t say anything and so the journal entry is the same. It is no innacurate, by the end of the quest you know that the roparu was wrongly accused of this particular deed, so even if you remain silent you still frame him. 

don't offer the new suspect cause the old one's execution was a reasonable outcome

the journal doesn't have enough variant to reflect the difference

player will be happier if there was a way to cause both suspect to be exiled rather than executed