EMPEROR Vs. RAMAVA CHANNAPPA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) In this case there is no doubt whatever about certain facts. One Chenappa died shortly after eating food prepared by his wife. It was found that he had died of arsenic poisoning. Then there is really no substantial doubt about these further circumstances: that the poison was given to Chenappa s wife by her mother and that she mixed it with the food she gave to her husband. The wife was charged with the murder of her husband and her mother was charged with abetting the murder.

(2.) The case was tried by a Jury in Belgaum. In the course of his charge to the Jury, the Judge pointed out that although there was no separate charge under Section 304-A of the Indian Penal Code, it was open to the Jury to find a verdict of guilty of an offence under Section 304-A and an acquittal under the charge of murder. With that direction in their minds the Jury came to the conclusion by a majority of three to two that the women were not guilty of any offence whatever. The Judge found himself unable to accept this verdict and has referred the case to us.

(3.) It is unnecessary to go into the evidence in detail, because it really is quite conclusive as to the circumstances I have mentioned. But at a very early stage in the case, that is to say, in their first statements to the Magistrate, the women maintained that the stuff which had been administered to Chenappa was a kind of medicine used as a love potion. If this is so, admittedly there is no case of murder, though there may be a case under Section 3O4-A. The Judge has come to the conclusion that it is a case of murder. One of the principal reasons which influenced his decision was that the day after the death of the man, the wife had made a statement to various of the witnesses which they regarded as an admission that she had intended to kill her husband, and the Judge came to the conclusion that these witnesses were not only telling the truth to the best of their ability but also had retained a correct impression of the purport of what the woman said. I do not doubt that the witnesses, according to their lights, were deposing truly. But I do gravely doubt whether they had retained a correct impression of what the woman actually said. The recollection of a conversation, when it is not corrected by some notes or account written down at the time or shortly afterwards, is a very tricky thing; and in the case of witnesses of the class of those with whom we are dealing, the recollection or supposed recollection is almost inevitably largely coloured by what transpired between the occurrence of the conversation and the recital of the conversation by the witnesses, In this case, for instance, I can quite readily conceive that what the woman said was that she had given medicine to her husband without either implying or suggesting that she knew that it was poison. Yet in the light of the events which subsequently came to knowledge, the witnesses may have quite honestly believed that what the woman really had implied, perhaps even said, was that she had intended to poison her husband. I think therefore, that that particular which was relied on by the Judge does not really exist in the form in which he supposes.