TMI Blog1938 (8) TMI 20X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... devices. The trial of the accused in the Sessions Court did not begin till October 1937, that is to say, till after a long interval of 16 months during which period the appellant appears to have been in jail. 2. The case against the appellant rests entirely on circumstantial evidence. No eyewitness speaks to the alleged strangulation and even the medical evidence as to the cause of death is not clear or even helpful. The learned Judge does not appear to have given sufficient attention to the importance of first deciding whether the crime of murder had been committed, or in other words, whether the death of Annapurni was due to the act of another and not to her own act. It was seriously argued before him that the death was due to suicide and that it was incumbent on him to deal with this aspect of the case separately from the other question which would arise only if it was established by the prosecution that a crime had been committed in respect of the death of the deceased, because until the commission of a crime is proved, it is not incumbent on the accused to explain, nor can he be called upon to explain, anything in the evidence appearing against him. It would appear as if t ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... o the jury that was condemned by their Lordships. This condemnation was reiterated in a subsequent Ceylon case which went up to the Judicial Committee, namely Seneviratne v. The King (1936) 23 A.I.R. P.C. 289. That is a case which is to some extent analogous to the present one. There also the accused was the husband of the deceased and he was charged with having killed her by administering chloroform to her, and it was contended that the death was suicidal. The evidence in that case also was entirely circumstantial and their Lordships observed, after a full consideration of the evidence, that when there is no direct evidence justifying a conviction and no medical or other circumstantial evidence justifying a conviction to arrive at an adverse verdict on the strength of opinions formed as to the conduct of the accused was to act upon the merest scintilla of evidence, and to be impermissible. 3. As in that case, so in the present, in dealing with the question of the accused's conduct and in drawing inferences therefrom it has to be borne in mind that the husband was in danger of incurring at least moral blame even if suicide were found to be the cause of death, and therefore ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... d his subsequent conduct in having absconded from the village are circumstances which go to show that he must have committed the crime. So far as the question of motive is concerned, I shall deal with it later on, but I do not think in view of what I have said above that any inference that death was homicidal could be safely drawn from the subsequent conduct of the accused. 6. So far as the question of the alleged motive for murder is concerned, the evidence does not really establish the existence of any such motive. * * * * 7. The important fact to remember in this case is that nothing is elicited as to any unpleasantness between the husband and wife for at least three months or so before the occurrence, and if the appellant and his wife had been living together in an amicable manner to all appearances for above three months prior to the occurrence it is in my opinion unreasonable to rake up the past and build adverse conclusions thereupon. The incidents mentioned are not unusual between young couples during their first year of marriage, and from the evidence regarding the occasional tiffs between the couple during this period it is impossible to say that the one did no ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... . Certainly the tightness of the rope was an important point which, if it had been observed at the time of the inquest, would have been noted in the Inquest Report, and this was not done. Reliance was also placed on the fact that the hands were not holding the rope as an indication that death was not suicidal. But on this point also the Inquest Report is silent. There are some other discrepancies regarding the appearances which I do not think it necessary to mention in full. For instance P.W. 20, the servant boy, mentions that there was a rope tied to the toe of the corpse, about which nothing is said by any other witness. These however are details which do not affect the result of the case. The substantial defect in the judgment appealed from is the omission to attach sufficient importance to the determination of the question whether the death was suicidal or homicidal or in other words, to put it more accurately, whether the prosecution has established that the death was homicidal, that is to say, due to the voluntary act of some person other than the deceased, in which case alone it was necessary to go into the case further. There are no doubt circumstances relating to the subse ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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