JIWAN Vs. EMPEROR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This is an appeal by Jiwan, son of Pitam Kachhi, who has been sentenced to death for the murder of Reoti Kachhi. The two men were living in a village or group of huts which had newly been established near some land which was being brought under cultivation. It is in evidence that they had been on good terms and had been in joint cultivation of some land but had quarrelled and separated. There was a dispute between them about some fields and there was an indication in a statement made to the police which was put to witnesses in cross-examination that there had been improper relations between the appellant and the wife of the deceased. The body of Reoti was found in a field on 6 July 1935. The medical evidence shows that his throat had been cut. He had suffered three injuries. One was an incised wound 5 inches long 1 inch wide and 2 1/2 inches deep on the right side and front of the neck cutting all the blood vessels and the nerves of the neck and also the trachea and the gullet. He had also received two superficial cuts, one four inches long and the other 2 1/2 inches long on the shoulder and under the chin.

(2.) The Civil Surgeon who made the post mortem examination of the body was produced as a witness and he deposed that the first injury must have been caused with some weapon such as a gandasa and that the other two injuries might also have been so caused or might have been caused with a spear. The first information report was made by a man called Dhan Singh who was sent to the police station by the headman of the village with a note in writing stating that the body had been found. Dhan Singh made a statement to the Sub-Inspector of police in which he said that the wound in Reoti's throat was caused with a spear. The Sub-Inspector went to the village or the group of huts where the crime was committed and from there we suppose to the parent village where he stayed in the house of one of the zamindars. We have before us three witnesses Rup Singh, a zamindar of Pindara, Puttu Singh, the lambardar of Pindara, who lives in Umar-pur and Mulaim Singh, another zamindar of Pindara. They say that the Sub-Inspector asked them to make enquiries and to try to discover who had committed the crime. We suppose that some suspicion must have been attracted against the appellant because of his relations with the deceased. The witnesses say that they summoned the inhabitants of the village in order to make enquiries from them and that the appellant did not appear with the other people who were living in the neighbourhood. The three zamindars therefore went to look for him and they found him next morning in a field or in a part of the waste land near the fields which had been newly cultivated. They say that they questioned him and he admitted at once that he had committed the murder and asked the zamindars to intercede for him with the police and to arrange that he should not be punished. There is no evidence whatsoever that any inducement was offered or any promise made to the appellant by the zamindars.

(3.) The story is that the appellant after making his statement to these zamindars took them to his house and produced the gandasa with which he had said that he had committed the crime. This gandasa was sent to the Chemical Examiner and the Imperial Serologist and it was reported that it was . stained with human blood. The appellant was then taken by the zamindars to the Sub-Inspector who arrested him and sent him to prison. After he had been in prison he was produced before a Magistrate and he again made a confession which he afterwards retracted in the Court of the committing Magistrate, and in the Court of Session.