RAJESWARI DEBI Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case the appellant before us is a woman named Rajeswari Debi. She was put on her trial before the learned Sessions Judge of Burdwan and a jury upon a charge of murder under Section 302 and another separate charge of abetment of murder under Section 302 read with Section 109, I.P.C. The charges were in respect of the death of a woman called Lilabati who was found with her head almost severed from her body on her bed in her own house on the morning of 22 January, 1931. The prosecution case was that Lilabati's husband was away on business and that the accused who lived at a house of her own some 6 or 8 bighas distant was to come in and sleep at night with Lilabati and keep her company. It further appears that Lilabati had a small child of about 15 or 18 months who slept with her. On the morning of 22 January, Lilabati's maidservant of the name of Jhalu Metani (P.W. 6) found that her mistress was lying in bed with her throat cut in the way I have mentioned. She saw the little child come crawling or toddling out covered with blood. Several of the neighbours came before very long; the accused Rajeswari came that very moment and the President of the Union Board wrote a letter which he sent through a chowkidar to the Sub- Inspector at the police station. Neither the Chowkidar nor the letter said anything about a particular person being suspected or having been incriminated as the murderer of the deceased. The Sub-Inspector came that day, the 22nd, and in the evening he held an enquiry. His inquest report included the statement that Lilabati had been alone in her house the previous night, that every one believed that some unknown person had committed the murder and that no one could say anything as to the cause, of this murder. A number of witnesses signed that inquest report after it had been read over and explained.

(2.) From the following day the 23rd, until about the 25 the Sub-Inspector remained in the village. He examined some witnesses for example, P.W. 2 under Section 161, Criminal P.C., on the 23rd. There was no mention at that time of any confession by the accused. He examined some other witnesses, in particular P. Ws. 4 and 5, but not until 13 February, by which time witnesses were speaking to a confession having been made by the accused on the morning of the 22nd at the time the lady was discovered and in the presence of the neighbours. As a result of the investigation a certain number of circumstances were discovered. Some of these are doubtful; others are reasonably certain. The chief thing was that a large sacrificial knife in the house of the accused was found on the morning of the 23rd. It is said to have been treated with oil but nevertheless there were spots of blood on this which have been found to be human blood. In addition to that there is a witness who says that at about 3 o clock in the morning of 22 January, he was out getting labourers and while passing Rajeswari's house he heard her saying that she was feeling restless and asking for water. The prosecution story according so their own witnesses is that when the neighbours came on the morning of the) 22nd, and Rajeswari also came, Rajeswari was the person who took down the quilt from the deceased woman; that they asked her to do this, and that she took it down to a certain extent and did not take it down further because she said the injury extended only that far. In view of this fact and in view of the fact that there was a small baby toddling about covered with blood it is not possible to lay any great stress on the circumstance that there were spots of blood on the woman's sari or on her hands. There is something rather in favour of the accused in the circumstances that between the morning of the 22nd and the 23rd, when her sari was seized at her house, she had apparently made some attempt to wash off the patches of blood on her sari and she did not apparently make any serious attempt to delete it altogether. But there has been from the beginning to the end of this case no scrap of evidence as to motive so as to render the action of the accused intelligible on the assumption that she committed this murder. At one time a different theory of the cause of this death was apparently put forward. There was a previous trial and one man was acquitted and this woman was convicted, but she was directed on appeal to be retried.

(3.) Taking this as a sufficient indication of the character of the case, the accused woman in this appeal makes a number of complaints against the charge of the learned Judge. I think that a large part of the charge, if I may say so, is very well done, but there is one portion of the charge which it seems to me that we cannot possibly support. I have already narrated that in the evening of the 22nd the Sub-Inspector having held his inquest and having seen quite a number of witnesses recorded that nobody whom he had seen could give him any notion as to the cause of the murder and that everybody professed that it was some unknown person. Now the main plank of the prosecution evidence in this trial is that on the morning of that day Rajeswari had uttered various expressions, some of which are entirely ambiguous and not necessarily expression of guilt at all, but that among other things she actually said "Look at the blood on my hands. I have cut her." It was therefore very important indeed for the defence to get before the jury the fact that although according to the prosecution this woman had used language of that kind in the morning in the presence of a number of neighbours including some of the persons most interested the Sub-Inspector in the evening was not informed of any such confession, all the people whom he had examined professing to have no knowledge at all as to the person who did the murder and attributing it to some unknown person. Now the defence do not appear to have seen the importance of this as early as they might have done. On 21 May before the Sub-Inspector went into the box this matter was clearly in the mind of the defence and they put in a petition according to which they wanted the learned Judge to give them a copy of this inquest report and wanted that certain witnesses speaking to the confession by the accused on the morning of 22 January, should be cross- examined upon it.