EMPEROR Vs. MTHAR PIARI

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by Government against an acquittal of a family of three persons, namely, Balwant Singh, his wife Mt. Durga, and their married daughter Mt. Har Piari, who were acquitted by the Sessions Judge of Mainpuri on a charge of having poisoned Har Piari's husband. If it were not that the learned Judge has expended upon this quite short case more than 7 solid printed pages of matter, we should have said that the case was free from any difficulty, and we have no hesitation in agreeing with all the assessors in finding that the wife administered the dhatura poison of which her husband undoubtedly died.

(2.) Before turning to the express findings of the learned Judge, which we shall have to mention in a moment, we may say broadly what is really elementary in connexion with cases of circumstantial evidence, that a violent presumption arises- perhaps one of the strongest presumptions known to the law-when a man dies in his own house surrounded by his own family, and poisoned shortly after eating food which must have been prepared for him by his wife, and no explanation is forthcoming from the occupants of the household as to what had happened to him to cause his death. It is not too much to say that there is hardly one of us, if our own wife or close relation living under our roof suddenly died, and the corpse were found buried in our house, who would not expect to be immediately called upon by the authorities for a clear explanation of the occurrence, and who would not be surprised, in the event of our being unable to give it, if we were charged with having caused the death. Where, in addition to such violent presumption, the persons accused-are proved to have been guilty of persistent lying in an attempt to account for the absence of the deceased, and are also shown to have hidden the corps to save themselves, the presumption becomes a certainty. The learned Judge has set out more or less correctly, though framed in verbiage which sometimes detracts from the value of the fundamental facts, six items of circumstantial evidence which were disclosed by the evidence at the trial against the accused. He has discarded at least two on grounds which to our minds are quite inadequate. We refer to the motive, which we think is clearly established, that this young woman was of a loose disposition and quite prepared to get rid of her husband; and the other the evidence of Hoti Lal, who said quite casually that he had seen the wife picking dhatura seed from some shrub outside the village and had naturally remarked upon it at the time, and against whom there is really nothing except what one may describe as fanciful suggestion, or, even as my brother said during the argument, the mere fact that he is appearing as a witness for the prosecution.

(3.) We see no reason whatever for recklessly charging this man, who is an independent person and a Brahman, with deliberate invention of what is after all a small piece of evidence. The learned Judge has omitted from his list one significant fact, which is no reproach to him, because it is one of those facts which require training and experience in criminal investigation to appreciate at its true value, but it is a significant fast that the stomach at the post mortem examination was found to contain about one pound of partly digested rice. The Government Advocate has drawn our attention to a statement in Lyon's Medical Jurisprudence that rice has been shown by experiment to be digested in about an hour. We have no medical testimony to assist us, and, therefore, we can only speculate. It is possible that if a doctor were asked, he would agree that in a parson suffering from dhatura poisoning, which undoubtedly affects the nervous system, the blood is thrown in to such a condition that the process of digestion is much retarded, and therefore it is necessary that one should make a substantial addition to the period of an hour in dealing with a person suffering from dhatura poisoning. But the presumption is irresistible that he died within a very short time and by that we mean at the most two hours of his last evening meal. Under the circumstances we have no hesitation in holding that the appeal succeeds, and that all the three persons are guilty of having caused the death of Beni Singh.