CHINTAMBARAMMA Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Leave granted.

(2.) Chintambaramma, Mother-in-law and Saraswathi, Sister-in-law of the deceased Sahitya are in appeal against the judgment dated November 20, 2017 maintaining conviction of the appellants for an offence punishable under Section 302 read with Section 34 IPC. The appellants were sentenced to imprisonment for life and a fine of Rs.10,000/- each was imposed upon them.

(3.) The marriage of deceased Sahitya was solemnised with L. Manjunatha on March 10, 2006. An FIR was lodged on August 25, 2009 by CW 1- Smt. Anjanamma that Sahitya has been killed by the appellants along with L. Manjunatha, Lakshmi, Raghavendra and Arunakumari. On the basis of FIR, the investigation was conducted by the Investigating Officer Manjunath (PW-18). Dr. S. Venkataraghava (PW-21) conducted postmortem. He noticed multiple nail scratches, abrasions over the face, around the mouth, maxilla, over the right-side neck, nail scratch abrasions over the lower part of the middle of neck and inner aspect of the right-side lower lip. Earlier, Dr. Bhakthavatsala (PW-22) initially examined the deceased when called by the Ramesh (PW-19). He reported that she was dead.