EMPEROR Vs. AKIA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) AKIA Mahar was tried by the Sessions Judge of Amroati with a jury on a charge of having attempted to murder his wife Purni, and the unanimous verdict of the jury was that he was not guilty. The learned Sessions Judge disagreed with this verdict and submitted the case to this Court under Section 307 of the Criminal Procedure Code, recording reasons for his opinion that Akia had been proved to be guilty of an offence punishable under Section 326 of the Indian Penal Code. The charge was one of an offence punishable under Section 307 of the Penal Code, but the learned Judge did not think the wounds caused to Purni were sufficiently serious to justify a conviction under that section.

(2.) THE facts about which there is no dispute are as follows : The relations of Purni with her husband and his family were not happy, and she was made to live in an old house belonging to the family separated from its present residence by a narrow road. Akia continued to take his meals in the new house with the rest of the family but slept with Purni in the old house. On the morning of the 19th of June, on some slight quarrel, Akia struck his wife in the road outside the house, and apparently used the usual threats of killing her, which may have meant anything or nothing.

(3.) REWIA hurried to the house and found the door fastened on the inside, so he climbed over a nine-foot wall and got in. Ha was followed by Sukia Mahar (P.W. 6) and Dajia Mahar (P. W. 5) each of whom got in by climbing over the same wall. Purni had an incised wound on the middle part of her right forearm, two scratches on her stomach and four punctured wounds on the left side of her body, one an inch below the left nipple, one on the left side of the stomach and two more, one above the other, below the left armpit. Dajia (D. W. 5) opened the door for her and she left the house. There was a knife somewhere in the courtyard, which Akia produced from under his cot a little later.