KUTTAN PILLAI ALIAS KUTTAPPAN Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant, Kuttan Pillai alias Kuttappan, aged 30, has been sentenced by the Additional Sessions Judge of Mavelikara to undergo rigorous imprisonment for life for murdering one Eapen alias Kunhunhu aged 49.

(2.) The prosecution case as gathered from the evidence of P. W. 4. the elder brother of the deceased, may be briefly stated. The accused and two or three others passed along the road in front of the house of P. W. 4 on 19-6-1959 at about 5-30 p. m. and the accused began to utter vulgar words standing exactly in front of the house where the deceased was living with his brother, P. W. 4, and family. The deceased Eapen got provoked and he stepped out. He tried to walk up to the accused to stop his abuses when the companions of the accused interfered and took him away to the south to avoid further troubles. At about 10 p. m. when P. W. 4 and his children were about to sleep, they heard loud abuses called out by somebody in front of toddy shop No. 2.3 near the deceased's house. This time also Eapen got out and went north along the road. Immediately P, W. 4 heard his brother's cry "Ayyo, I am being killed." He and his children ran up to the place where Eapen was seen standing wounded and his injury being dressed by P. W. 1, a tapper of toddy shop No. 23. In reply to a question by P. W.4 as to what happened, the injured said "Parathileth Kuttappan (the accused) stabbed me." When P. W. 4 asked Eapen about the injury, he cried and said "It is insufferable. It is insufferable." The injured was removed to a better place and from there he was removed in a car. P, W. 4 says that he swooned at the sight of blood and when he regained consciousness he came to know that he was taken to his house and that his brother was removed to the hospital in a car by the persons gathered at the place.

(3.) P. W. 15, the Head Constable then in charge of the Panthalam Police Station, swears that he recorded correctly the statement of the injured (Ext. P. 13) at about 2.30 a. m. in the night as the first information.