KOLLI SEETHA RAMI REDDI Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant has been convicted by the learned Sessions Judge of Guntur of the murder of a woman named Gangamma, and has been sentenced to death.

(2.) Gangamma was a widow about 30, living with brother Nagi Reddi (P.W.1) in the village of Tumular in the taluk of Tenali. On the 30th of July last, in the afternoon, she went out to work in a field belonging to her brother, and in the evening her dead body was found on the bund of an irrigation channel immediately to the north of that field. There were five stab-wounds on her body, inflicted with some such weapon as a spear, and the case is without doubt a case of murder. It was alleged by P.W. 1 and his wife P.W. 2, that after the death of Gangamma's husband she had contracted an illicit intimacy with the appellant, but had broken it off about a year before. During the last year of her life Gangamma is said to have been on terms of positive enmity with the appellant. The learned Sessions Judge has held that "the accused evidently got infuriated with the deceased for ceasing her connection with him and waited for an opportunity to wreak vengeance and killed her when the opportunity came."

(3.) The evidence against the appellant was wholly circumstantial. Three witnesses were examined who might have been eye-witnesses, but just failed to see the actual murder, one because she ran away before it was done, and the other two because their attention was drawn to the scene after the murder had been committed. The woman who ran away was P.W. 3. She says that she went with Gangamma to help her to fetch grass from P.W.1's field. She began to work in a different place from Gangamma, and she had only just begun to cut grass when she heard the voices of two persons in angry altercation. Going near the northern edge of the field, she saw that the two who were quarrelling were the appellant and Gangamma. She tried, she says, to approach them, but the appellant said to her: "Advance a foot and you are dead" She then left the field altogether, went back home and then went to Davulur to sell fish. The other two are washermen, examined as P.Ws. 4 and 5. They said that they happened to be putting up a shed near the scene of the murder, and when they looked up they saw the deceased Gangamma lying on the ground, and the appellant bending over her. The appellant came in their direction pointing a spear at them, and thereupon they ran away home to Kollipara.