FAKIRA APPAYA Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The appellant here was the 2nd accused before the Court of Session. Altogether there were five persons accused of the murder of one Yemnaya, and of these five the present appellant and another were convicted. The trial was held before a Jury and in the case of this appellant the Jury were unanimous against him.

(2.) The case for the prosecution was that one Ningawa, the first accused before the Sessions Court, was the mistress of the deceased man; that she and several other villagers having a cause of ill-will against him, he was lured by her into her house on the 5th February last; that there he was murdered by the accused, that his dead body was carried away to a field about 1 1/2 miles distant, and was on a sub-sequent date removed to another spot on the site of a neighbouring village. The dead body was discovered in the morning of the 9th of February, and that night the woman Ningawa was arrested. The present appellant was arrested on the 10th of February. On the 12th of February, Ningawa made a confession before the First Class Magistrate, Mr. Patankar, in which she said that the murder had been committed by the accused No. 4 and his two sons. She did not name the present appellant as having taken part in the crime. After all the five accused had been arrested, the enquiry proceeded as usual before the Committing Magistrate, Mr. Maxwell, and before that Magistrate on the 19th March the present appellant made the statement Exhibit 25. That statement is of a confessional character, and was subsequently repudiated in the Court of Session on the ground that it had been induced by promises held out to the appellant by one Annappagouda, who was the Police Patel of the village where the appellant lived and who had taken part in the investigation of this crime.

(3.) There can be no doubt upon the record, and indeed neither side has attempted to question, that the conviction of this appellant was based entirely upon his statement to Mr. Maxwell, Exhibit 25. The record does indeed contain one or two fragments of other evidence which might be pressed into the service of the prosecution by way of corroboration. But they are of such very minor importance that admittedly no conviction could be had upon them, even if they would by themselves amount to fair justification for the appellant s commitment for trial. I propose, therefore, to say no more in regard to these unimportant pieces of evidence but to deal with the case as a conviction which must stand or fall with the appellant s statement to the Committing Magistrate.