DEVEERAMMA Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant was tried for the murder of her daughter-in-law, in Mandya Sessions Case No. 5 of 1957 on the file of the learned Sessions Judge, mysore. She was convicted under the second part of S. 304 I.P.C. and sentenced to undergo rigorous imprisonment for a period of three years. She has appealed to this Court against her conviction and sentence.

(2.) The accused has two sons. The eldest son Sivappa had married the deceased about two years prior to the occurrence. The prosecution case is, that even since the marriage, there were constant quarrels and bickerings between the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law. The accused is alleged to be one of those proverbial mother-in-law. It is said that the deceased was made to work from morning to evening without any rest; she was harassed, abused and beaten; due to the ill-treatment meted out by the accused the deceased several times ran away from her husband's house and sought shelter at her parents house; but on each of those occasions the deceased was persuaded to go back to her husband's house with persons of better treatment; but these promises were never kept up. The further case for the prosecution is that on 16-6-57 the deceased was made to toil as usual from morning to evening; on that day her father had sent P.W. 9 Madappa, a cousin of the deceased with certain religious ceremony in his house on the next day; P.W. 9 had conveyed this information to the deceased and asked her to take the permission of her mother-in-law to go to her father's house, but when the deceased requested the accused to permit her to go to her father's house that evening, that request was unceremoniously turned down and she was asked to wash the clothes: in obedience to the mother-in-law's command the deceased washed the clothes till evening; a little before sun-set the accused happened to return with her sheep after grazing them; then the deceased asked her (assused) whether the washed clothes should be dried immediately; this provoked a volley of abuses from the accused who took the deceased to task for not drying the clothes as and when they were washed; provoked by the behaviour of the accused, the deceased in turn called names to the accused; infuriated at this the accused took a stone which was lying nearby a stone which was about the size of a palm, and threw it at the head of the deceased; the stone struck the temple of the deceased; on receiving the blow the deceased fell down dead; thereafter the accused pushed the dead body into the tank and went home; during the right the accused told her son Sivappa that the deceased must have gone to her father's house without her permission; on the next morning even before others had got up from their bed the accused went to the tank in question and there she saw the dead body of her daughter-in-law floating; soon after she went to the house of the Village Patel and informed the Patel's son P.W. 5 Shivanna, as the Patel was absent from the village, that her daughter-in-law had accidentally slipped and fallen into the tank and that her dead body was floating in the tank. P.W. 5 recorded this information (Ex. 8) and sent a report to the Mandya Rural Police Station. On receipt of this report, S. 1. Narayan went to the scene of occurrence and held and inquest over the dead body of the deceased and thereafter submitted a report under s. 174 of the Criminal Procedure Code. After the inquest was over, he sent the dead body to the Medical Officer at Mandya for post-mortem examination. The Post-mortem examination revealed that the deceased must have died due to external violence. The post-morten examination disclosed the following injuries:

(3.) In this case there are no eye-witnesses to the commission of the offence. The evidence available against the accused can be classified under four heads i.e., (1) Her confessional statement made before P.W. 2 under S. 164 Cr.P.C. And marked as Ex. P. 4; (2) The discovery of M. O. 1 on the information supplied between the accused; (3) The enmity that existed between the accused and the deceased; and (4) The absconding of the accused from about 18-6-57 till 28-6-57.