IMPORTANT POINTS
‘Related’ is not equivalent of ‘interested’.
Evidence of witnesses cannot be discarded merely because they are family members of deceased.

JUDGMENT

N.V. RAMANA, J.

These appeals by way of special leave petitions arise out of a judgment dated 20th February, 2007 passed by a Division Bench of the Madras High Court, Bench at Madurai in Criminal Appeal No. 319 of 2004. By the said judgment, the High Court confirmed the conviction and sentence imposed by the trial Court against the appellants herein, while acquitting accused no. 1 of the charges levelled against him. Criminal Appeal No. 1312 of 2008 is preferred by Accused Nos. 2 & 3 and the appellant in Criminal Appeal No. 1313 of 2008 is Accused No. 4. As the order impugned in both the appeals is one and the same, we proposed to deal with both the appeals by way of a common order.

2. Briefly stated the prosecution case is that Muthulakshmi (Accused No. 4 — appellant herein) had love affair with one Murugan, son of PW1—Armugam. When the said Murugan refused to marry her, a complaint was lodged in the Kovilpatty police station and with the intervention of villagers and police, their marriage was solemnized on 5-2-1999. Ever since their marriage had taken place, there were frequent quarrels and rifts between both the families leading to strained relations between the couple. Petchimuthu, the father of A-4 had even lodged a complaint against his son-in-law—Murugan, his father (PW1) and sister (Poomari) as she was held to be the root cause for all disturbances between the couple. Police had called the couple and advised them to live together peacefully, but after some days, Muthulakshmi (A4) came out of her matrimonial home and returned to her parental home.

3. On 4.8.1999, Ponnu (A1), Ganapathi (A2) and Chitravelu (A3) carrying deadly weapons, spotted Murugan near a street hotel and attacked him. While Ponnu (A1) instigated the other two accused to hack Murugan, Ganapathi (A2) stabbed Murugan with a knife on the chest and Chitravelu (A3) had inflicted cut injuries with a sickle on Murugan leading to his instantaneous death on the spot. The assailants then fled away from the scene of offence. Father of the deceased—PW1 (Armugam) and PW2 (Poomurugan— another Son of Armugam) who were standing nearby had witnessed the occurrence.

4. While that being so, on the same day when Poomari (daughter of Armugam—PW1) along with her daughter Sakunthala (PW3) went to a nearby well for washing clothes and taking bath, the four accused, appeared there and attacked Poomari in front of her daughter. Chitravelu (A3) inflicted cut injuries on Poomari with a sickle and Ganapathi (A2) stabbed thrice with knife in her stomach causing her intestine to come out of her stomach. After that Chitravelu (A3) gave the sickle to Muthulakshmi (A4) and instigated her to attack Poomari. Muthulakshmi then inflicted cut injuries on the head, hand and face near nose of Poomari with the sickle, and Poomari had died on the spot. PW3 (Sakunthala), daughter of Poomari, a ten year old school going child, who was present at the scene, had witnessed the crime.

5. On the complaint of PW1 (Ext.P1), Ottapidaram Police Station registered the Crime Case No. 72/99 against the accused under Section 302, IPC and conducted investigation. The Investigating Officer visited the spots, conducted inquest (Ext.P31), prepared observation mahazars (Ext. P2, P3) and sketches of scenes of death (Ext.P27,P29), recovered bloodstained earth and normal earth, severed hair locks, mangalsuthra and other incriminating articles from the scene of offence in presence of witnesses and obtained their signatures. Other formalities such as recording of statements of witnesses and sending the bodies of the deceased for postmortem were followed. The accused were arrested on 5.8.1999 at 5.30 am on Velayuthapuram Junction at Ottapidaram Cross Roads and the police seized weapons from them that were used in the crime and sent the same for chemical examination. The case was then committed to the Court of Sessions and their statements recorded under Section 313, Cr.P.C. the accused pleaded not guilty an