EMPEROR Vs. SHASI BHUSAN MAITY

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is a reference by the Additional Sessions Judge of Hooghly, at Howrah, under the provisions of Section 307 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, against an acquittal of the accused Sashi Bhusan Maity by an unaminous verdict of the Jury on a charge under Section 304 of the Indian Penal Code.

(2.) The case for the prosecution is that, as the result of a quarrel between Sashi Bhusan Maity, the accused, and his wife, Jnanoda, Jnanoda left her husband s house to go to her father s house; that the accused overtook Jnanoda on her way there; that high words passed between them, and that the accused seized a half burnt bamboo and with this inflicted severe injuries upon the head of Jnanoda, as the result of which she died immediately. It is suggested on behalf of the accused that Jnanoda met her death not as the result of any blows inflicted by her husband as the prosecution allege, but that she was the victim of a robbery and that, in the course of being robbed, she met with the violence which caused her death. It is necessary to examine the evidence which has been given by the pro-section to sea if the evidence is sufficient or us to accept the reference that has been made to us.

(3.) Now, the material evidence consists of the evidence of a witness named Narain Dasi; she states, that she knows Sashi and his wife and that in Aughrayan last, about 11 or 12 A.M., she was picking up cow dung on some open land and that she saw Sashi s wife come there and stand there; that than Sashi came and said something to her which she could not hear; that Shasi then began to beat her with a piece of charred bamboo, and that then she fell down. The witness said that she told Sashi not to beat her but that he continued to do so saying, "I will kill her and I will die with her."