KING-EMPEROR Vs. RAMANUJA AIYANGAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Before dealing with the first point to be considered by this Full Bench, I propose to set out some of the facts of this case.

(2.) At 1.34 A.M. on the 13 January of this year the Parcels Express train which left the Egmore Station at Madras, at 10-40 P.M. arrived at Karunguzhi Station on the South Indian Railway There it delivered six parcels. Five of these were handed over to respective owners on production by them of the tickets relating to them at about 7 O clock on the same morning. The sixth remained undelivered as no one claimed it. It is described by Mr. T.S. Narayanaswami Aiyar (P.W. 28) the Assistant Station Master at Karunguzhi to whom all the parcels were delivered as a bed parcel packed in a date leaf mat. The receipt of this parcel and the others was acknowledged by this witness in Ex. U. In order that parcels could be carried by that train as luggage it is necessary for the senders to have passenger tickets and the number of each passenger ticket is entered on Luggage Ticket form which gives the particulars of its respective parcel. Ex. W, is the one which relates to the undelivered parcel. The passenger's ticket number therein is III class No. 4901. The tickets relating to the other five parcels were duly collected on the night in question. Passenger ticket No. 4901 was not collected that night and has never been collected, thus raising a very strong inference that the sender of this parcel did not travel by train at all but only got the passenger ticket in order to enable him to send the parcel by the train and this is shown by the prosecution evidence. On the night of the 13 a foul smell was detected coming from the store room in which the undelivered parcel had been placed and on the morning of the 14 this smell was found to come from the parcel. At 5-30 P.M. on the same day, namely, the 14 January, the parcel was opened in the presence of the Railway Police Sub-Inspector of Chingleput, the Sub- Magistrate of Madurantakam, the Station Master and others and was found to contain the dead body of a woman. This was rolled in a date leaf mat and the pieces of gunny and rolled round the body was a mattress. The post-mortem examination resulted in a medical opinion that the dead woman had been killed by manual strangulation, the hyoid bone having been fractured. The majority verdict of the jury at the trial shows that the prosecution evidence identifying the dead body as that of a woman named Seethammal was accepted by them. This woman was the wife of Parthasarathy Aiyangar (P.W. 1). According to the prosecution evidence she left him on the 4 August, 1933 and joined the prisoner taking with her jewels and some silver vessels. The prosecution evidence is that Seethani mal and the prisoner were living together thereafter at various addresses in Madras and in the statement made by the prisoner at the Sessions trial he admitted that he lived with her in a house at Muthukrishnier Street for four or five days and then went with her to No. 24, Peddunaicken Street and it is in this latter house that the prosecution case was that Seethammal was strangled to death on the night of the 11 January. In his statement he denied that he ever lived in a house in the Post Office Street as deposed to by one prosecution witness. The prisoner and Seethammal went to No. 24, Peddunaicken Street on about the 22nd December, 1933. The prosecution evidence as stated by P.W. 2, the lessee of No. 24, Peddunaicken Street, P.W. 3 a tenant of a portion of the house and P.W. 6 a milk-seller who was supplying milk to Seethammal and the prisoner and who used to deliver milk to the former at the top of the stairs which led to the room occupied by the couple each morning at 5-30 or 6 shows that Seethammal lived at that address with the prisoner until the 11 January being last seen in that house at 6 or 6-30 P.M. on that date by P.W. 2 down-stairs in the Court-yard drawing water from a water-tap, by P.W. 3 at 7 or 7-30 P.M. the same day and by P.W. 6 the milk-seller on the morning of the same date. Thereafter Seethammal was never seen alive. On the morning of the 12 January P.W. 6 the milk-seller, went as usual to deliver the milk but found on going up the stats that the door leading into the. room was locked or secured from outside. She then went downstairs and told P.W. 2 that she had been unable to find anyone upstairs. At this time her account for milk supplied was unpaid. Later on she was paid by P.W. 2 who received and gave Rs. 4 on the morning of the 12 from the prisoner who, upon being questioned about what the milk- woman had reported, said that he had taken Seethammal that morning to his sister's house at Saidapet to assist his sister who was in labour. The prosecution case was that this explanation for the absence of Seethammal was untrue and in his statement at the Sessions trial the prisoner himself gave it up because he there stated that Seethammal left him on the 4th January. The prisoner remained at Peddunaicken Street until the 13 January when he went to another address and thereafter he pledged some silver vessels identified by the prosecution as those taken away by Seethammal when she left her husband on the 4 August, 1933. Before this on the 4 January, 1934 he had pledged another silver vessel similarly identified by the prosecution. Efforts to trace the sender of the parcel containing Seethammal's body resulted in the discovery of P.W. 25 Munuswami, a cooly porter at Egmore Railway Station, and P.W. 26 Jaganatha Thathachari, Assistant Parcels clerk at the Egmore Railway Station, the former of whom received the parcel from the accused at the Egmore Railway Station at about 9-45 P.M., on the 12 January, and with the assistance of another porter, not a witness in the case, carried it and weighed it in the weighing machine at the Parcels Office. The latter witness booked the parcel to Karunguzhi at the request of the prisoner. Both these witnesses identified the prisoner at an identification parade and at the trial. The case for the prosecution, therefore, was that Seethammal was last seen alive in 24, Peddu-naicken Street where she was then living with the prisoner on the 11 January, and that on the evening of the next day the prisoner sent her dead body wrapped up in a parcel to Karunguzhi by train and that afterwards he pledged silver vessels and jewellery alleged to belong to Seethammal. In these circumstances the prosecution contended that the jury were entitled to and ought to draw the inference that the prisoner had committed the murder, in the absence of any explanation from him which could be accepted as true accounting for her disappearance from No. 24, Peddunaicken Street and her re-appearance as a dead body wrapped in a parcel and sent by the prisoner by train to Karunguzhi the medical evidence being that she had been strangled. As I have stated before, beyond the two contradictory statements made by him, his denial that he committed the murder, and in the Committing Magistrate's Court his statement that he knew nothing about Seethammal - there was no explanation with regard to why and when Seethammal left the house, and way he sent off her dead body in a parcel, if he did so. The Jury by a majority of 6 to 3 found the prisoner guilty of the offence of murder and, there being no mitigating circumstances present, he was sentenced to death.

(3.) It is now necessary to refer to a matter in the case which is the foundation for the first point covered by the certificate of the Advocate-General. When the parcel was opened Seethammal's body was found to be wrapped up in a coir mattress and the case for the prosecution was that a mattress identified as similar to this was purchased during the morning of the 12 January from one Shaik Nannu Sahib, a mattress seller in Madras whose servant was P.W. 10 Mohammad Kasim and that the prisoner was its purchaser. The purchase price was Rs. 3. The purchaser paid only 8 annas as he had no money with him then and asked that the mattress should be sent by a coolie and said that he would send the balance with the coolie. This coolie was Thayammal P.W. 11. A cash bill Ex. D-1 was given. In that bill neither the name nor the address of the purchaser is given. P.W. 11's evidence was that on instructions from the purchaser she went to the fish market at Kondithope and there waited for him. After some time the purchaser came and took her to a house near the fish market where she deposited the mattress outside a house at about 12 noon, received the balance of the purchase price and took that back to the mattress shop. Although unable to give the number of the house or the street, this witness subsequently pointed out the house to the Police and it was No. 24, Peddunaicken Street, where the accused was living on the 12th January. From this evidence it might be, inferred by the jury that the purchaser of the mattress did not wish to let the vendor know where he was living viz., in that house. Whilst P.W. 10 was being examined in chief at the Sessions Trial when asked the following question "subsequently did the Police come to you in connection with this case?" he answered: "About 10 or 11 days afterwards, about 4 P.M., this Inspector and another Aiyar came with the accused and the accused pointed out that shop saying that it was in that shop that he purchased the mattress/No objection to this evidence with regard to what the prisoner stated was taken by learned Counsel for the prisoner--an Advocate of very large experience. This witness was then cross-examined by the Prisoner's Advocate with regard to what the prisoner had said on that occasion. P.W. 11 stated nothing about what the prisoner had said on this occasion in examination-in-chief but in cross-examination she said "The accused himself mentioned me and said that it was a woman wearing a coral necklace." No objection was taken by learned Advorate for the defence to this answer. She was also questioned by the Court on this matter. P.W. 42, S.R. Krishna Aiyangar, Inspector of Police in Cross-examination stated: "While we were coming out, the accused pointed out that woman with coral beads on her neck and said that was the cooly that carried my mattress ". In examination-in-chief he had stated that he and the prisoner had gone to the premises of the mattress-seller and that the prisioner pointed out the premises having taken the witness direct to that shop., As stated in the Certificate of the Advocate-General no objection was raised with regard to the admissibility of the evidence as to what was stated by the prisoner on that occasion. In my charge to the Jury I referred to this matter as follows: The evidence is that the accused came to the shop in a motor car, got out and pointed out to the Police, this is the shop; that is the man and this is the coolie woman who carried the mattress . But the accused denied all this. This is not only the evidence of these two witnesses but it is also the evidence of the Crime Branch Inspector Mr. Krishna Aiyangar who gave evidence at the end.