EMPEROR Vs. HANMARADDI RAMARADDI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A certain Hanmaraddi has been convicted of the murder of Rama Valikar and has been sentenced to death. The case comes before us for confirmation of that sentence and also on the appeal of the convict.

(2.) It appears that about the 22nd of August 1913 the corpse of a man, whose head was almost severed from his body, was found in the village of Haleratti. On making inquiries the police discovered from the neigh bouring villagers that the murdered man had been accompanied by another man and a woman. They were all strangers to that locality. Neither the identity of the murdered man nor his companions was at the time ascertained. About a month later, howeve", the identity of the murdered man came to be suspected. His wife was questioned and thereafter the police were enabled to make complete inquiries. They discovered that the murdered man was one Rama and that his companions were the accused and the deceased s wife Honnava. It was found that Hon-nava had for some time been living at Makrabi where the accused also lived, that her husband had been working at another village Magal, that he had taken his wife from Makrabi for a time and that thereafter he and his wife set out to go to Haveri and were joined on the way by the accused. On their journey these three persons crossed the ferry between Bannimatti and Galagnath, whence they proceeded to the place where the corpse was subsequently found. From there Honnava and the accused returned, spending the night at a village on the way and recrossing the ferry on the following day. This gave the police an opportunity of which they availed themselves of tracing the movements of these persons and identifying the individuality of each. They have been enabled to put before the Court perfectly credible evidence of all the circumstances that I have stated. Then there is the evidence of the dead man s wife Honnava, who describes how her husband was murdered. It is said that she is an accomplice witness. However that may be, we must, in a case of this kind, regard her evidence with caution, because whether an accomplice or not, she was present at the murder and for weeks thereafter she gave no information about the crime and it is proved that she had illicit intimate relations with the accused. It does not seem to me to matter in the least whether you call her an accomplice or not. Her evidence must be valued in relation to these circumstances. However, in the light of the surrounding circumstances, from the undoubted truth of the facts that the three persons travelled together, that one of them was left dead where his body was found and that the other two returned to their village together there can be little doubt that the man was" murdered by one or both of them. This conclusion is fortified by the sub-sequent conduct of the accused himself who gave an untrue account of his proceedings and had two letters written at intervals of about a fortnight which were designed to induce people to believe that the murdered man was still alive and working in a distant village. Here, again, the evidence is, to my mind, credible and indeed convincing. Taking the circumstances as a whole, they leave no doubt whatever that the accused was the man, whether helped by the woman or not, it does not matter, who killed Rama.

(3.) The credit of the elucidation of these circumstances is mainly due to the promptness and intelligence of the police inquiry and for that inquiry I gather, Balwant Vyankatesh, Sub-Inspector of Haveri, is mainly responsible.