EACHARAN ASARI Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant has been convicted by the Additional Sessions Judge at Parur under S.302, I. P.O. for having caused the death of his wife Karthiayani by hacking her head a number of times with an axe at about 8 a.m., on the 1st December 1958. The appellant was living with his wife, his daughter Omana, and his mother Pw. 5. He and his father inlaw, Pw. 6, decided to go On pilgrimage to Sabarimalai, and for that purpose, they commenced the preliminary observance of pollution by wearing a chain each on the 15th November, 1958. Seven days before the occurrence, when Karthiayani commenced her period, she removed-herself to the house of the appellants brother Krishnan about 100 feet to the east. After her bath on the morning of the 1st December, she returned to her house, when she was taken to task by the appellant for not returning after the fourth day of her period. According to the prosecution, she retorted, asking the appellant how it concerned him. Upon this, the appellant snatched a woodcutters axe and cut her on her back. She ran out of the house crying aloud and entered the verandah of Krishnans house. Pw. 2, Krishnans wife and Pw. 3 the wife of Kunjan, another brother of the appellant, also living close by, hurried there. In the meantime, the appellant came running after his wife with the axe, and when she ran out to escape, she fell on the courtyard, and the appellant then inflicted several cuts on her head with the axe and she died immediately. The commotion had attracted Pw. 1 a neighbour, who witnessed two of the final cuts made by the appellant on his wife, standing a little to the south. Pw. 1 then proceeded to the police outpost about a furlong away, and returned to the scene an the company of two police constables. At that time the appellant was in his house washing the axe and he was taken to the outpost and arrested by Pw. 8 one of the police constables on duty. He was afterwards taken to the Thodupuzha Police Station, where Pw. 1 gave a, statement, Ext. P1 which was treated as the first information. After the investigation was completed, a charge under S.302 was laid against the appellant, and on commitment he was tried and convicted as stated above.

(2.) The appellant pleaded guilty in the Sessions Court when the charge was read and explained to him, but the learned Judge allowed the trial to proceed. In his statement under S.342, Crl. P. C. the appellant did not offer any explanation for the several circumstances brought to his notice by the learned Judge; in the end he explained, that when he questioned his wife on her return, she answered that she liked living with Krishnan and not with him, and employed hot words against him, upon which he did something. In the appeal memorandum in this court in ground No. 6, he seemed to admit the occurrence, but pleaded for mercy, having acted under provocation adding in ground No. 5 that he suspected her chastity, and that there ensued an exchange of words between them. The learned Sessions Judge believed the eyewitnesses, Pws. 1 to 3, and came to the conclusion, that the appellant caused the death of his wife. He also held, that the act of the appellant was not saved by Exception 1 to S.300, I. P. C.

(3.) Karthiayani had sustained fourteen injuries, of which three alone were abrasions and the others were mostly lacerations on, the head. Injuries numbers 2 to 5, as recorded in the post mortem certificate, were necessarily fatal and death was instantaneous. There can be no doubt on the evidence that Karthiayani died as a result of her wounds.