SYED BATCHA SAHIB Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) We have no doubt but that the Sessions Judge is right in finding that the appellant, Syed Batcha Saheb, is guilty of having killed his wife, Kader Bibi, on the night of the 11th June last.

(2.) But we do not accept his finding that the offence did not amount to murder, but amounted only to culpable homicide punishable under Section 304, Indian Penal Code.

(3.) The evidence shows that the appellant was drunk and wished his wife to leave at night and go with him to Erode and that she was unwilling to go at night but said she would think about it in the morning, and that the appellant, angered by this refusal, struck her in the chest with a pen-knife, the wound having gone 2 1/2 inches deep and penetrating the pericardium so that she bled profusely and died in a very short time from shock and hemorrhage. The appellant pleaded alibi in the Courts below but made no attempt to prove it. In his appeal to this Court, he, for the first time, pleads that the woman was murdered by her brothers owing to disputes about property, but there is no evidence to support the plea. We agree with the Sessions Judge that the prosecution evidence proves that it was the appellant who killed the woman.