RAMANBHAI MANGABHAI GHODYA PATEL Vs. STATE OF GUJARAT

JUDGEMENT

(1.) APPELLANT has challenged judgment dated 20th February 2010 rendered by the learned Sessions Judge, Navsari in Sessions Case No.24/09. He was convicted for offence under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

(2.) BRIEFLY stated, prosecution version was that the accused and his wife Jashuben @ Bhaliben were residing in a small village Gandeva in Navsari district alone. Their daughters were either married or staying with relatives. The accused was in the habit of picking up quarrel with his wife and also beating her up. On 1.4.09, their nighbours saw that the husband was fighting with his wife and was also beating her. He was a headstrong person and the neighbours, therefore, did not intervene. Next morning when women of the neighbouring area came to collect drinking water from the Government handpump, they saw Jashuben lying dead just outside the house. The accused had ran away. Married daughter of the deceased was informed on telephone at her residence where she was residing with her family. She came and lodged a complaint before the police.

(3.) EX .2, charge, alleged that the accused had between 8 O'clock in the night of 1.4.09 and 1 O'clock in the early morning of 2.4.09, caused serious injuries to deceased Jashuben with a piece of wood and thereby caused her death and committed offence of murder.