GOKUL CHANDRA CHATTERJEE Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an application for revision by on a Gokul Chandra Chatterjee who was convicted of an offence under Section 306, PenalCode and sentenced to eighteen months' rigorous imprisonment.

(2.) THE petitioner was tried by a learned Assistant Sessions Judge sitting with a jury upon a charge of abetment of suicide, his son Biswa Ranjan Chatterjee was also tried with him upon the same charge. The jury unanimously found Biswa Ranjan not guilty and the learned Judge accepted the verdict and acquitted him, The jury however toy a majority of three to two found the petitioner guilty and accepting the verdict the learned Judge sentenced him, as I have indicated, to eighteen months' rigorous imprisonment. An appeal to the Sessions Judge was dismissed.

(3.) THIS young woman Swarnalata was married to Bankim, a son of the petitioner Gokul. She was the daughter of one Chandi -Charan Ganguly of a village called Chauma -shina which was not far away from the village in which Gokul lived. It is said that the marriage between Swarnalata and Bankim was an unhappy one and that practically from the outset the young girl who was only about fifteen years of age when she married was ill treated and assaulted by her mother -in -law, by her husband and Biswa Ranjan, the husband's brother. A son was born to Swarnalata, but it is said that about a month after the child was born Swarnalata left the house of Gokul, her father -in -law, and went to her father's house at Chaumashina. According to the prosecution Swarnalata was really driven away from her father -in -law's house and was deprived of all access to her small son. She wrote a number of letters to her father -in -law and her mother -in -law begging that the child should be sent to Ghaumashina, but the petitioner was adamant.