MAYA BASUVA Vs. STATE OF TAMIL NADU

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Accused 1 and 2 in S. C. No. 107 of 1949 on the file of the Court of Session, Coimbatore division, have been convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of one Giri Gowda just after dusk on 23rd October 1948 at the village of Doddinduvadi in Coimbatore district. They were also convicted under Section 201, Penal Code, for causing disappearance of the evidence of murder. There were two other charges, viz., that against accused 1 with having caused simple hurt to Siddha Chetty (P. W. 3) and accused 2 with having caused simple hurt to Siddha Gowda (P.W. 1). For these minor offences, accused 1 was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for two months and accused 2 also to rigorous imprisonment for the same period. Accused 3 who is the appellant in C. A. No. 660 of 1949 was found guilty of an offence under Section 201, Penal Code along with accused 1 and 2 and sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for five years. The referred trial and the appeals by the accused have been heard together and we have heard arguments from Mr. V. Rajagopalachari for accused 1 and 2 and from Mr. P.S. Balakrishna Aiyar for accused 3. As the facts and circumstances are so interconnected that it will be convenient to deal with the two appeals to gather, we do not intend to deliver separate judgments in each of the appeals.

(2.) Shortly put, the prosecution case is that accused 1 and 2 were on inimical terms with the deceased Giri Gowda and therefore they, along with a number of other people, lay in wait on the evening of 23rd October 1948 when Giri Gowda was returning from Kollegal to his village, waylaid him, dragged him out of the jutka in which he was travelling and then accused 1 stabbed him and accused 2 beat him. Thereafter he was carried to nearby place where again he was stabbed and beaten as a result of which he expired. It is further stated that after sometime both accused 1 and 2 exclaimed that Giri Gowda was dead and there, fore they should carry him away. The evidence in the case further proves that he was carried away from the scene of crime and later on has not been heard of at all. [After setting out the case for the prosecution and reviewing the evidence, His Lordship proceeded :]

(3.) Regarding the first argument that corpus delicti has not been produced, Mr. P. S. Ramachandran Aiyar in his reply invited our attention to a decision of the Allahabad High Court reported in Bandhu v. Emperor, 25 Cr. L. J. 900 : (A. I. R. (11) 1934 ALL. 662). The learned Judges Stuart and Sulaiman JJ., were of opinion that where a man was brutally attacked with lathis by several persons and after being beaten into unconsciousness was removed by the assailants and was never seen again it is not possible to hold that the man is dead and, therefore, the assailants could not be held guilty of murder. In our opinion the legal position has been too widely stated in this decision. The learned Public Prosecutor invited our attention to passages in the judgment of the Allahabad High Court in Empress of India y. Bhagiratha, 3 ALL. 383 and also to the statement of law contained in Archbold'a Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice. 31st Edition, at p. 365. He also submitted that statements in Gour's criminal Law, Vol. II at p. 1020 are helpful for his contention. We need hardly add that it is not obligatory for proving the death of an individual that his dead body should be recovered. In the footnote at p. 865 of Archbold'a Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice, 31st Edn., we find the following observations: