DASRATH PASWAN Vs. STATE OF BIHAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Appellant Dasrath Paswan was convicted for the murder of his wife and sentenced to transportation for life by the learned Sessions Judge of Muzaffarpur. The trial was held with, the aid of four assessors, all of whom found the appellant not" guilty. The learned Judge disagreed with this opinion.

(2.) The prosecution case is that the appellant, a resident of village Etwarpur Pakri, was a student of class X. His academic record in school was unsatisfactory. He had failed at the annual examination for 3 years in succession. The deceased, his wife, was aged about 19 years. It appears that she was a literate woman. The appellant was very much upset at these failures. He took his last failure so much to heart that he left home and remained away from the village for about a week prior to the occurrence On return home after a week he told his wife that he had decided to end his life. His wife told him in reply that he should first kill her and then kill himself. This talk took place at about 8 a.m. on 13-6-55. That morning the parents of the appellant had gone out early in the morning to work in the fields and there was nobody else in the house besides the appellant and his wife. In accordance with the pact, about an hour later, the wife spread a mat on the floor in one of the rooms in the house and lay down quietly. The appellant at first struck her with a bhala causing a minor injury on her chest. Then he took up a sharp-cutting hasuli and gave her three violent blows on the neck killing her on the spot. He then ran out of the house with his bloodstained clothes in order to end his own life when he was detected on the village chawar, at a little disance from the house, by Mathura Paswan, a boy aged 12 years (P. W. 12), who was tending his goat in the vicinity. Seeing his blood-stained clothes the boy ran to the appellant's house and saw the dead body of appellant's wife lying there in a pool of blood. He then rushed to the appellant's father and informed him of the occurrence Paldhari Hazra (P. W. 15), the father of the boy, who also happens to be the choukidar of the village, asking Birija Sah (P. W. 13), who was working nearby, to chase his son and catch him ran to his house where he found his daughter-in-law lying dead with her neck cut. The blood-stained bhala and hasuli were lying by the side of the dead body. Birija Sah (P. W, 13) and Rashbehari Paswan (P. W. 7) had in the meantime chased the appellant and brought him under arrest to his house. Soon a large number of villagers collected there and the appellant made an extra-judicial confession admitting that he had killed his wife. Paldhari then went to Lalganj police station which was at a distance of 2 miles from the village and lodged the first information report which was recorded by Assistant Sub-Inspector Rambalak Singh at 11 a.m. in the absence of the senior Police officers. The blood-stained bhala and hasuli which had been carried to the thana by Paldhari were taken charge of by the Assistant Sub-Inspector.

(3.) The Assistant Sub-Inspector reached the place of occurrence at 1-30 p.m. and found the dead body lying flat on a mat on which a chadar had been spread. He held the inquest and did other preliminary works. He examined the appellant who had been kept tied there. There were bloodlike stains on his dhoti, kurta and ganji. The Assistant Sub-Inspector took charge of these clothes and prepared a seizure list in respect thereof (exhibit 5/1). He then sent the dead body to the Civil Assistant Surgeon of Haji-pur for post-mortem examination. The appellant was kept at the thana lock-up at night and forwarded to the Subdivisional Officer of Hajipur next morning at 7-30 a.m. On the 16th June, 1955 he made a confession which was recorded by a Magistrate of the first class at Hajipur. In this confession also he admitted that he had killed his wife and that as he was going to end his own life he was caught by the villagers on the village Chawar.