PUBLIC PROSECUTOR AND LAKSHMAMMA Vs. MITTA VENKATAMMA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This case comes before me owing to a difference of opinion between Waller and Pandalai, JJ. The facts have been stated fully in the judgment of the learned Sessions Judge and briefly but sufficiently in that of Waller, J. On Thursday, the 2nd April, 1931, a male child aged 3 entered or was decoyed into the house of which the two respondents, who are mother and daughter, are inmates, and there murdered. The motive for the crime was undoubtedly a wish of the husband of the 2nd respondent, Kondayya, to adopt the boy, which for easily understood reasons would be objectionable to the two women. They were tried on charges both of murder and of causing the disappearance of evidence with the intention of screening the offender from legal punishment under Secs.302 and 201, Indian Penal Code. As regards the former charge, the learned Sessions Judge found that the child must have been killed either by both the women together or by one of the two; but he was of opinion that the evidence did not exclude the possibility that one might have committed the murder without the assistance of the other, so that in his view it was not possible to convict either of that offence. He convicted them both under Section 201, Indian Penal Code, and sentenced the 1st respondent to four years rigorous imprisonment, imposing upon the 2nd respondent the nominal sentence of simple imprisonment until the rising of the Court. The Public Prosecutor has appealed against the order of acquittal under Section 302, Indian Penal Code, and for enhancement of the sentences passed under Section 201, Indian Penal Code. There is also a Criminal Revision Petition presented by the parents of the child, praying for similar modifications in the orders passed.

(2.) When the case came before the Criminal Bench of this Court, Waller, J., after summarising the facts drew the inference from them that both the respondents must have been acting in concert throughout. He relied upon the considerations that both shared in the motive and were alone together in the house and he was unable to believe that either would have run the risk of killing the boy and hiding his body without the knowledge and connivance of the other. It had also been proved that both of them had subsequently made false statements when asked if they had seen the child and had acted together in disposing of the body. The learned Judge concludes with the observation, Probably only one of them actually committed the murder--it does not matter which of them it was--but I do not doubt that the other connived at it.

(3.) The view taken by Pandalai, J., agreed with that of the Sessions Judge, that the evidence was insufficient to show in the case of either of the respondents that she actually participated in the crime. It was clear from the facts, as indeed was conceded by Waller, J., that it was possible for either of the respondents to kill the child without the assistance of the other, and although both may have had a motive to do away with it, that circumstance did not show that both had in fact participated in the act. The subsequent conduct of the respondents in disposing of the body was in Pandalai J.'s view fully explicable on the ground that they are mother and daughter and that if either of them had committed the murder the other would readily help her to keep it a secret to escape detection.