MENDAI SINGH Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant Mendai Singh has been convicted by Shri S.B. Banerji, Additional Sessions Judge, Partabgarh, on 26-4-1950, under Section 302, Penal Code, and sentenced to transportation for life.

(2.) The appellant Mendai Singh is a Thakur and lives in village Parbatpur. He was carrying on an illicit love intrigue with Mt. Manjokhi, deceased, wife of Bhuar Chamar. She was living in village Bindra, a hamlet of village, Partapur. Her husband used to live away from his village but returned there a few weeks before the present occurrence. The love intrigue between the appellant and the deceased was notorious in the village and Bhuar came to know of it and he made a complaint to the Adalati Panchayat in that behalf. This ended in a compromise on 38-11-1949 and Rs. 40 were paid as compensation by the appellant to Bhuar, husband of the deceased. After the compromise, relations between the appellant and the deceased were broken off so much so that the deceased, whenever she saw the appellant, used to abuse him in filthy language. On 1-12-1949, at about 11 a. m., when the appellant was working near a tank, the deceased also went there to wash some clothes and she again abused the appellant. The appellant at the moment said nothing but apparently he resented this conduct very much. The same day, at about 2 or 3 p. m, the deceased was working in a khalyan of Jugul Kishore P. W. 16 with Mt. Sugni P. W. 14. The appellant came there armed with a spear and straightway inflicted several injuries on the deceased which ended in her death on the spot. Mt. Sugni raised an alaram whereupon some other persons, Aunul Haq P. W. 15, Jugul Kishore P. W. 16 and Darshan P. W. 18 also saw either the appellant striking blows on the deceased or the appellant armed with a spear going away from the scene leaving the deceased dead on the scene. The appellant himself went with the blood stained spear to the police station and made a report of the occurrence at 4.30 p. m. His clothes were found blood-stained and were seized by the police. The spear was also seized by the police and the appellant was promptly arrested. The police started investigation and the appellant was put up before a Magistrate the next day for the recording of his confession. The Magistrate gave the appellant 24 hours to think it over and on 3-12-1949, the confession of the appellant was recorded. The appellant's defence in the Court below was that he was entirely innocent, that he had made the confession only under the influence of the police, that in fact he had not committed the murder, that in spite of the compromise relations between him and the deceased continued, that on the day of the occurrence at about 2 p. m., he was in a sugarcane field with the deceased in a compromising position that her husband happened to come there and first tried to attack him with a spear but when he avoided it he attacked his own wife, the deceased, that somehow he managed to get hold of the husband and snatch away the spear from him but unfortunately the deceased had died as a result of the injuries inflicted on her by her husband, that he himself went to the police station with the spear find his clothes which were blood stained to make a report implicating the husband and not himself, and that some how the report taken down is not his report. He produced no witness in defence. The eye witnesses produced by the prosecution and the confession made by the appellant and his admission of illicit love intrigue with the deceased and what happened on the day of occurrence at 11 a. m. before the actual murder, were considered by the learned trial Court to be sufficient to prove beyond any reasonable doubt the guilt of the appellant. The appellant was accordingly convicted and, in view of the resentment caused to the appellant by the abuse from the deceased, the learned Judge inflicted the lesser penalty, i.e. transportation for life.

(3.) It has been urged before us by the learned Counsel for the appellant that the earlier incident mentioned in the first information report ought not to have been taken into consideration against the appellant, that the confession was not voluntary and therefore was not admissible in evidence and that in any case the learned Judge did not comply with the requirements of the law in recording the confession inasmuch as he recorded it in English and not in Hindi, the language of the accused and that the eye-witnesses too are not reliable. We have heard the learned Counsel at considerable length and have no hesitation whatever in holding that the appellant has been rightly convicted.