KING-EMPEROR Vs. RAMANUJA AIYANGAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The learned Chief Justice acting under Clause 25 of the Letters Patent has reserved as a point of law for determination under Clause 26 the question whether certain statements given in evidence at the trial of M. Ramanuja Aiyangar for murder were admissible. The statements which are in question were made by the prisoner while he was in the custody of a police- officer at the shop of a witness P.W. 10, and had relation to the sale of a mattress by that witness at that shop to the prisoner on the 12 January, and to the carriage of the mattress by a coolie woman, P.W. 11 from the shop.

(2.) The circumstances in which the statements came to be made may be briefly narrated. It is in evidence that the murdered woman had left her husband on the 4 August last year and from that date had been living with the prisoner at different places in Madras. From the 23rd December until the evening of 11 January, which was the last occasion according to the evidence on which she was seen alive, the prisoner and the woman were living together at 24, Peddunaicken Street. On the evening of the 12 a package was brought to Egmore Railway Station in a cart and a luggage ticket taken for its despatch by train that night to Karunghuzhi by a man who has been identified as the prisoner. The package was not claimed on arrival at Karunghuzhi next morning and lay in one of the station offices until the smell of it led to its being opened and to the discovery of the body of the woman sewed up in a coir mattress. This was on the 14th. The medical evidence showed that the woman had been strangled. The Police investigation began forthwith. The prisoner, who had moved from his lodging in Peddunaicken Street on the 13th, was arrested on : the afternoon of the 23rd. The same afternoon, in consequence of information given by the prisoner, he was taken by a Police- officer, P.W. 42, to the shop of P.W. 10, and it was there that the statements, the subject- matter of the point of law reserved, were made. - P. W. 10 and P.W. 11, it should be observed, have identified the mattress found in the package round the body as the mattress which was sold to the prisoner on the 12 January.

(3.) In examination-in-chief the shop-keeper, P. W. 10, deposing to the visit of the prisoner with the Police to his shop, said: The accused pointed out the shop, saying that it was in that shop that he purchased the mattress.