EMPEROR Vs. RAMESHWAR BINJHIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Under the provisions of Section 374, Criminal P.C., the Judicial Commissioner of Chota Nagpur has referred to this Court for confirmation the sentence of death which he has passed upon Rameshwar Binjhia, aged 30, upon conviction on a charge under Section 302, I.P.C., of having on 7 October last at village. Targa committed murder of Khorain Binjhiain, by striking her with a balua. Rameshwar has preferred an appeal from jail. The reference and appeal have been heard together and will be governed by this judgment and hereinafter Rameshwar will ordinarily be referred to as the appellant.

(2.) The facts do not admit of any doubt and Mr. Chaudhuri has confined himself to the question of sentence. The Binjhias are a tribe of semi-Hinduised aboriginals in the Simdega subdivision of the Ranchi District. All the parties live in Targa in the Kolebira thana. The deceased Mt. Khorain, a woman of 35, living with her husband close to the house of appellant, visited appellant's house about 4 o clock on the afternoon of 7 October and presented a piece of roti to his female child Pratima who was about a year old. She did so in presence of both the parents. After the visitor has left, the child, though previously perfectly well and playing about, began to be ill after having eaten the bread given to her by Khorain.

(3.) She is said to have vomited twice and to have purged and generally to have become very ill and to have suffered from cramps and lock-jaw and eventually to have died about the time of the night meal. The appellant believing his only child to have been poisioned by their visitor, took his balua, proceeded to Khorain's house where apparently shelay asleep on the pinda and without a word dealt her at least five violent blows with the balua mostly on the left side, one at least of which was necessarily fatal.