KAPPINAIAH Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The two appellants have been sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment and to 12 stripes each for committing rape. Basuvi, the woman whom they are said to have raped on 26 August 1929, was found drowned on 30 August 1929 in a neighbouring canal.

(2.) Therefore she has not given evidence and a preliminary question of law arises whether her statement to her mother-in-law P. W. 2, made shortly after the alleged departure of the two accused from her bedroom on 26 August 1929 is admissible in evidence. The learned Judge holds that it is admissible not only under Section 32 (1), Evidence Act, as relating to the cause of her death; but also under Secs.6 and 8 of the Act, an observation which argues little attention either to fact or law.

(3.) The woman is said to have been raped on Monday and was alive on Thursday morning and so Section 32 can have no applicability. That section refers to the actual cause of death, or to the transaction resulting in death. If a woman is raped, and decides three clays later to commit suicide the rape is not the cause of her death or, transaction resulting in her death, though it may be the contingent motive. Then her statement could only be relevant under Section 6, if it is so Connected with her rape as to form part of the same transaction is one of what are known as the res gestae. Taylor offers as the best general idea of what is meant by res gestae everything that may fairly be considered an incident of the event under discussion and proceeds to lay down that a mere narrative of a past occurrence cannot explain an act. The leading case upon statements made after ravishment is Regina V/s. Lillyman [1896] 2 Q.B. 167, and there it is assumed at the very outset that such a statement is no part of the res gestae: p. 170.