EMPEROR Vs. KUBERAPPA DHARMAPPA CHIWATI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case two men Kuberappa bin Dharmappa, accused No. 2 and Krishna bin Yellappa, accused No. 2, were charged before the Court of Session at Dhanvar with murder by causing the death of one Parsappa. They were acquitted by the learned Sessions Judge with whom the two assessors agreed, and from that order of acquittal this appeal is now brought by the Government of Bombay.

(2.) It may be convenient to set out in limine certain admitted facts in this case, and those admitted facts are these : The deceased Parsappa, a man of advanced years, was related to the first accused who expected to inherit property from him. The two accused are close friends. Next door to the first accused lived his mistress, a woman named Tara. Next door to Tara lived the deceased man Parsappa. Both the accused were in embarrassed circumstances. On the night of the nth March Parsappa was by some person or persons strangled to death under circumstances which constituted his killing the offence of murder punishable under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code. His dead body was found in his own house partly covered by a blanket on the following morning, the 12th of March. Search of the premises was made and ornaments worth Rs. 1,500 were found to have been stolen from his safe. The safe had to be forced open, as the keys of it could not be found. This crime baffled detection for some time, and not till after the lapse of about a month did the investigation upon which the prosecution now rely prove fruitful. Hi above, as we have said, are the admitted facts.

(3.) And the facts upon which the prosecution in this case rely are as follows:- According to the prosecution it was these two accused who plotted to kill the deceased in order to rob him of his ornaments and so to relieve their own indebtedness. To that end they lured him into the house of Tara on the pretext of supplying him with medicine for his eyes which had been giving the deceased some trouble. When he had been the enticed into the house, Tara, obeying the orders of the two accused, squeezed some chilly juice into his eyes, and thus temporarily blinded him. While thus disabled, he was set upon by both the accused who strangled him, the second accused also striking him on the jaws and chest with a large stone. The two accused then removed the deceased s keys, rifled his safe of the ornaments, threw the keys into the pit of Tara s privy, and then, carrying off the corpse out of Tara s house, took it through the court-yard over the party wall into the deceased s house, and there abandoned it leaving Tara s blanket lying partly over it and partly near it. The next morning the villagers suspicions were aroused and the Police were communicated with. The house was entered and the dead body of Parsappa f was found and sent off for post-mortem examination. No clue to the perpetrators of the offence was obtained until the 10th April when the Sub-Inspector, following up certain information which had been conveyed to him regarding the blanket found on the corpse, went to Belgaum, the original residence of Tara, and there collected certain proof that the blanket was Tara s property. Armed with this proof, he returned to Dharwar and confronted Tara with the knowledge which he had acquired. On the 13th April the first accused was arrested. Our the 15th April the second accused and Tara were arrested, and the bulk of the ornaments stolen were found in the house of the first accused s grand-father Ningappa, on information supplied by the second accused. On the 16th April Tara made her confession to a Magistrate, which confession is to all intents and purposes to the same effect as her deposition in the Court of Session. On the 17th of April, in consequence of information furnished by Tara, the pit of her privy was searched by Bhangis, and in it were found a lock and some keys which are fully identified as those of Parsappa s. On the 18th April the first accused produced from where it lay hidden in a file of letters a pearl nose-ring also fully identified as the property of the deceased,