ABU PRAMANIK Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellants in this case were tried by the learned Sessions Judge of Pabna and Bogra on a charge framed under Section 302/34, Indian Penal Code. The jury by a majority of 5/4 found them all guilty under that section and the learned Judge in accordance with that verdict sentenced them to transportation for life. The ease for the prosecution briefly was that these four appellants and another man Mahiruddin Fakir who has been examined as an approver in the case murdered one Kusumbala wife of Sasadhar Das on the night of 31 January 1940. It was the case for the prosecution that the appellant Abu was on bad terms with Sasadhar Das and that at the time of the occurrence there was a criminal case pending against Abu which Sasadhar Das was conducting on behalf of the prosecution. This case was actually fixed for 1st February 1940 and Sasadhar Das left home in connection with it on the afternoon of the murder. The story is that on that night the deceased woman was sleeping in a hut with a girl called Nanibala who was about eight years of age. The four appellants and the approver came into the hut that night and three of them seized the woman and held her down while the appellant Abu slashed her across the neck with a dao. The deceased woman attempted to resist and produced a dao from under her pillow with which she cut the appellant Arikulla on the left thumb. The appellants then removed her body from the chouki on which she was lying, laid her on the ground on her back, covered her with a quilt and ran away. Nanibala raised an alarm and her father, Sasadhar's mother and other witnesses came up.

(2.) Information was lodged to the thana on the next day at 12 o clock. The body was sent for post mortem examination and the Civil Surgeon found two injuries on the neck. One of these was a superficial wound in front of pomum adami vertical in character and about 1" long and joining the oblique wound. The other which was the fatal injury was an incised wound running from below the lobe of left ear and extending obliquely down and forwards to about 1/2" below and to the right of pomum adami cutting lower edge of Hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage and the left juglar vein was severed. The lower end of the wound is bifurcated. The opinion of the doctor was that both these injuries were suicidal and to that opinion he adhered when giving evidence in Court. He admitted however that it was possible that the fatal injury might have been homicidal injury.

(3.) The appellants Abu and Abbas were arrested on 4 February and the approver on the 6th. The latter produced a dao from his house. The prosecution case was that this was the dao which belonged to the deceased woman and which the appellants had taken away from her house in mistake for the dao which belonged to Abu. There was a test identification held in Bogra jail at which the appellants Abbas and Arikulla were identified by the witness Nanibala. The defence of the accused was that the deceased woman had actually committed suicide and it was suggested that Sasadhar Das her husband took advantage of it to implicate the accused because they were his enemies. In addition to the evidence of the approver, there was the direct testimony of the girl Nanibala who said that there was a lantern burning in the room and that she saw five men there among whom she named two and subsequently identified Abbas and Arikulla. It is not of course disputed that the death of Kusumbala was due to the injury to the throat and the neck and the two main questions before the jury were, first, as to whether that injury was homicidal or suicidal and secondly whether if it was homicidal the appellants or any of them were guilty of murder.