EMPEROR Vs. MRAMANUJA AYYANGAR

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. At 1-34 A.M., on January 13, of this year, the Parcels Express train which left the Egmore Station at Madras at 10-10 P.M., arrived at Karunguzhi Station on the South Indian Railway. There it delivered six parcels. Five of these were handed over to the 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.

(2.) It is described by T.S. Narayanaswami Ayyar (P.W. No. 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. Exhibit W is the one which relates to the undelivered parcel. The passenger's ticket number therein is Third 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 13th, a foul smell was detected coming from the store room in which the undelivered parcel had been placed and on the morning of the 11 this smell was found to come from the parcel. At 5-30 P.M. on the same day, namely January 14, 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 pieces of gunny and rolled round the body was a mattress.

(3.) The post mortem examination resulted in a medical opinion that the dead woman had been killed by manual strangulation, the hyid 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 Ayyangar (P.W. No. 1). According to the prosecution evidence she left him on August 4, 1933, and joined the prisoner taking with her, her jewels and some silver vessels. The prosecution evidence is that Seethammal 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 want 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 January 11. 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. 21 Peddunaicken Street, on or about December 22, 1933. The prosecution evidence as stated by P.W. No. 2, the lessee of No. 24 Peddunaicken Street, P.W. No. 3 a tenant of a portion of the house and P.W. No. 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 January 11, being last seen in that house at 6 or 6-30 P.M. on that date by P.W. No. 2 downstairs in the courtyard drawing water from a water tap, by P.W. No. 3 at 7 or 7-30 P.M., the same day and by P.W. No. 6, the milk seller, on the morning of the same date.