THIRUMALLESHA Vs. STATE OF KARNATAKA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Appellant/Accused No.1 has preferred Criminal Appeal No.280 of 2019 against the Judgment of conviction and order on sentence dtd. 16/10/2018 passed in SC No.10007 of 2017 by the IV Additional District and Sessions Judge at the Doddaballapura (for short the "the trial Court"). Being aggrieved by the impugned Judgment of acquittal in respect of accused No.2, State has preferred Criminal Appeal No.269 of 2019.

(2.) For the sake of convenience, the parties herein are referred to as per their rank before the trial Court.

(3.) Brief facts of the case are that the Doddabelavangala Police filed a charge-sheet against the accused for offences punishable under Ss. 302 and 201 read with Sec. 34 of the Indian Penal Code. On 9/12/2016 at 8.15 am, Lakshminarayana R of Kadanurpalya appeared at the police station and filed a complaint. The summary of the complaint is that his father Ramamurthy, has two younger brothers, Muniraju, and Nagarajappa, who lived with their family in Kadanurpalya. Nagarajappa married Muddulakshmamma of Doddaballapura and had been living there since their marriage. They had no children. For some reason, Nagarajappa had a fight with his wife six months earlier and had to return to his family's house, where he worked as a labourer. About twenty days prior to the incident, Nagarajappa had a fight with his father Ramamurthy and, instead of returning home, began to stay at the house of Thirumallesha in the same village. On 9/12/2016, at around 7.00 am, when the complainant was near their house, someone came and told him that his uncle Nagarajappa had been murdered and his body thrown into a culvert near Nanjappa's land, on the road leading from Kadanurpalya to Mallohalli Colony. The complainant and his father by name Ramamurthy, immediately went there and found that their uncle had been murdered elsewhere and the body dumped at that spot. There was a mark on his left leg, and he had been struck on the head with some weapon and killed.