PALLASANNA HANEEFA Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This case has been laid before me under S.378 and 429 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898, on a difference of opinion between the two learned Judges Anna Chandy, J. and Govinda Menon, J. who constituted the Division Bench which heard it in the first instance. Haneefa the appellant and Nabissa his deceased wife were mazdoors in a tea estate called the Sentinal Rock Tea Estate in South Wynad. The appellant has been convicted by the Sessions Judge under S.302 I. P. C. and sentenced to death for having caused the death of his wife by cutting her with a pruning knife, at about noon on the 19th January, 1965, in a paddy field, near a culvert situated between tea fields or blocks, as they are called, Nos. 17 and 19 which are all marked in the plan Ext. P-6.

(2.) The appellant and his wife with their child, then about three months old, were living with his parents in a room in one of the "lines" as they are called, in which the mazdoors and maistrics of the estate lived. One evening about a week before Nabissa died, there was an incident in the course of which the appellant gave her a healing. From the next day, she look up residence in another room in the same "line", in which PW 7 Another, a maistry of the estate, lived with his wife and five children. On the 19th noon, as alleged by the prosecution, while Nabissa was returning from the leaf shed where she had been to for the break in the noon, to the tea field for the afternoon plucking of tea bunds followed by Pw 1 Narayanan, PW "2 Pazhanivelu, PW 3 Lakshmi, and others, and reached the culvert, the appellant who was corning in the opposite direction questioned her whether she would not return to him and then beat her and pushed her.

(3.) In his statement Ext. P-12 in the committal court, though the appellant denied that the witnesses were speaking the truth, he admitted having cut Nabissa; but his case was, that while he was going for collecting firewood, he saw Nabissa and PW 7 lying together on the ground, that on seeing him PW 7 ran away but he lost control of himself, and inflicted the cuts on her. In his statement before the Sessions Judge under S.342, Crl. P. C. also, he adhered to the same version more or less, though he did not admit having actually cut her; be added however, that when he confronted her she told him that she loved PW 7 and he then lost his mental balance.