MANI ALIAS MANIKANDAN Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) CHALLENGE is made to the judgment of the Additional District cum Sessions division (Fast Track Court No. 4), Coimbatore at Tirupur, made in S. C. No. 274 of 2008 whereby the sole accused/appellant stood charged, tried and found guilty under Sections 302 and 177 I. P. C and awarded life imprisonment and one year rigorous imprisonment respectively along with fine and default sentence.

(2.) THE short facts necessary for the disposal of this appeal can be stated thus:

(3.) ADVANCING the arguments on behalf of the appellant, the learned counsel would submit that in the instant case the prosecution had no direct evidence to offer, hence, relied on the circumstantial evidence but miserably failed to place or prove necessary circumstances as per law. According to the prosecution, the occurrence has taken place on 22. 4. 2007 in the evening hours. In the instant case, as usual, the accused who came there from work at 10. 00 p. m. found the dead body of his wife and informed to others and also P. W. 1 and then he went to the police station at 3. 00 a. m. and gave Ex. P4 report. On the strength of which, a case came to be registered directly for murder and when the investigation was on, he was also kept in custody for number of days but the police could not find out the person who did the offence but they prepared number of documents as if the appellant has role to play in the crime. P. W. 2 and P. W. 3 who were shown as husband and wife, were actually neighbours of the accused. According to P. W. 2, he was not able to say at what time the accused came to the place of occurrence. P. W. 3 could not come with a proper evidence. So far as P. W. 5 was concerned, according to him, he saw the accused at 2. 00 p. m. on the date of occurrence but in the cross examination, his evidence is shaky. So far as P. W. 7 was concerned, she was the employer of the accused. According to her, the accused got permission at 1. 30 p. m. on the date of occurrence and nowhere she has stated that he returned to work thereafter. These are all the circumstances as to the last seen theory but all these remain shaky. The learned counsel would further submit that the dead body was found at 10. 00 p. m. by the accused and there was a long interval. P. W. 8 was examined as if the deceased had some illicit intimacy with him. The examination of P. W. 8 did not prove that the accused entertained suspicion about his wife.